


A Memory of Eden

by ImprobableDreams900



Series: Eden!verse [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alzheimer's Disease, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Aziraphale, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Cohabitation, Depression, Domestic, Eden - Freeform, Falling Angels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Human!Aziraphale, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Pre-Slash, Protective Crowley, Slow Death, Torture, Whump, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-07-25 13:21:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 31
Words: 129,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7534309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Crowley gets captured by angels and dragged up to Heaven, Aziraphale knows he has to rescue him—no matter the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Uninvited Guests

**Author's Note:**

> **Update for new readers: There will be one more fic in this series, to be posted sometime in fall 2018. As it currently stands, though, the series is rather complete, and wraps up nicely. So if you fancy reading to the end of what is currently posted, I promise it won't end with a cliffhanger. :D **
> 
>  
> 
> So this was supposed to be like 40k and then it just sort of…kept going.
> 
> I have been reliably informed by my lovely betas that this fic is very sad, so consider yourself warned.
> 
> I should note that I’m working the friendship angle with Aziraphale and Crowley throughout this fic (I see them as being ace platonic life partners/soulmates (depending on which side of the free will/ineffability divide you stand on)), but you can also read it as pre-slash if you like. The way I see it, they couldn't be closer if they were lovers, so I don’t see why they need to be. Alternatively, they’ve spent the last six millennia together and would die for each other in an instant, so you can read that any way you like. ;)
> 
> As of March 2017, everything's been switched over to British English and/or Britpicked.
> 
> If you'd rather read this in Russian, the lovely Sonnet23 is currently working on a translation [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13901475/chapters/31990932).

Dedicated to Herb and Terry

“I have always imagined Heaven to be a kind of library.” —Jorge Luis Borges

 

“Hang on,” Crowley interrupted, raising a hand. “You’re saying that _Ludwig the Second_ is one of yours?”

Aziraphale nodded eagerly, splaying his fingers across the table and leaning forward, eyes bright. “He’s made Germany a fortune in tourism. And his castles! Neuschwanstein, Linderhof—gorgeous! Got Heaven’s hand all over them.”

Crowley made an ungracious noise and sat back in his chair, waving away the angel’s words. 

They were sitting at the small table in the cramped sitting room above Aziraphale’s bookshop, surrounded by stacks of books and two recently emptied tea cups.

“Ludwig _bankrupted_ Bavaria during his reign,” Crowley protested. “Germany only made the money long after he was dead!”

“Quite a legacy, though.”

Crowley scoffed. “I thought your lot cared more about moral character than financial gains. He was crazy, wasn’t he? And he hung out with Wagner a lot—and _Wagner_ was one of ours.”

Now it was Aziraphale’s turn to gape. “Not Richard Wagner! And Ludwig had fine moral character! He gave away thousands to commoners, and that thing about him being insane was pure slander.”

“Yeah, ‘cause someone of such high moral stock wouldn’t have got himself deposed and killed by his own advisors.”

Aziraphale drew himself up in his chair, looking respectably insulted. “I’ll remind you of the pantheon of greater and lesser saints betrayed and killed by their own friends, and that didn’t have a thing to do with _their_ moral character—”

Crowley leaned back in his chair, tipping it back onto the rear two legs. He held his hands up in surrender. “Touché, touché,” he conceded. 

Aziraphale frowned. “You know, I may have a book on this,” he said, abruptly brightening as he sprang to his feet. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Crowley groaned audibly. “Not another book!” 

They’d been playing this little game for a while now—finding some obscure historical figure they both remembered, and neither had personally seen residing Above or Below, and laying odds on where their soul currently lay. Crowley, being perpetually cynical, always assumed they went Below, while Aziraphale, with his boundless optimism, always assumed they went Above, so they usually had a fairly decent discussion. But then Aziraphale would remember something he’d read in a book two hundred years ago, run off, and return minutes later with an armful of obscure tomes, which he would submit as evidence. It just sucked the fun out of life.

About half the time the books ended up swaying the argument in Crowley’s favour, but Crowley was feeling fairly confident in his abilities sans books. He was currently winning with a respectable 70% success rate. Aziraphale chalked this up to high-profile individuals being more easily corruptible, while Crowley thought it was simply because people were inherently bad. 

In any case, once Aziraphale lugged the books upstairs, Crowley was subjected to thirty minutes of the angel searching through each one for the exact passage he remembered. Aziraphale’s memory was excellent; he could usually get within twenty pages of whatever he was looking for, but the whole process was such a bore. It was like someone looking up the price of tea in China when someone else had asked. It wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. That wasn’t the _point_.

Ever since the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, however, Crowley had limited his protests on this front. Aziraphale was still slightly miffed about the loss of his entire book collection and its subsequent reinstatement as a collection of first-edition children’s books, and he had only recently started going out and re-buying books he’d had the first time around. There was already a monumental pile stacked between bookcases near the rear of the shop, and another scattering on the table in front of the demon.

“I’ll just be a minute!” Aziraphale said quickly, already through the door.

Crowley remained in his seat for a few seconds, shaking his head as he heard the angel’s footsteps recede down the staircase. 

He glanced absently at the books already on the table, gleefully delivered by the angel during their debates about Christopher Columbus, Edmund Halley, Catherine the Great, and Nefertiti.

Suddenly another point occurred to him about Ludwig—this one would convince the angel—and he drew himself to his feet. He was halfway down the stairs, grinning as he opened his mouth to say something sarcastic, when he was stopped short by the unexpected sound of voices. 

The first syllable of the demon’s sentence caught in his throat as he teetered on the step. He quickly steadied himself with the banister, swallowing his words. Crowley crept the rest of the way down the stairs and paused on the last step, inching his head near to the doorframe of the main room, remaining just out of sight.

“—don’t understand.” That was Aziraphale, sounding baffled and a little distressed.

“The demon has corrupted you,” said a new voice, huskier and flat. “He has…enchanted you somehow. We need to know how.”

Crowley felt himself tense, and he fished around quietly in his pocket for a weapon. Miracling something up with potentially supernatural beings nearby would give him away in an instant, so he’d have to make do with whatever was on hand. He kept his ears carefully tuned to what was happening in the next room as his questing fingers wrapped around an object.

“We need you to come with us, so we can prevent this from happening to other angels.” That was a second new voice: a little higher than the first, and marginally more compassionate.

“But Cro—the demon hasn’t done anything to me.” Aziraphale sounded perplexed. Crowley could picture the angel’s eyebrows drawing together, his head cocking slightly to the side. Maybe tugging nervously on the edge of his tartan jumper. “He’s hasn’t…cast a spell over me or anything.”

“That’s just what the spell makes you think,” said the second voice, not unkindly. 

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” added the first, less kindly.

“Oh, I think I _do_.” Aziraphale’s voice darkened slightly, downturning to a lower register. Crowley doubted either newcomer noticed the subtle change, but it was impossible to know someone for six thousand years without learning when they were nearing the end of their patience. “And I’m not coming with you. I don’t mean any trouble, brothers—” Aziraphale broke off with a yelp.

Crowley surged forward, plunging recklessly through the doorway, drawing from his pocket the only weapon he could find.

Before him stood Aziraphale and two tall men in identical light grey suits. Even their combed-over hair was the same, though one was blond and the other dark-haired. Crowley recognised angels when he saw them, and could tell at a glance that these two didn’t get out much. One had Aziraphale by the arm and was twisting it so the shorter angel flinched in pain. 

Crowley, rushing toward them, took hasty aim and threw the cheap ballpoint pen from his pocket straight at the closer of the two intruders. Though it did nothing but smack him rather ungraciously in the face, the moment of surprise was all Aziraphale needed. He wrenched his arm free and, with his other hand, slugged the blond angel holding him solidly across the jaw. 

The angel staggered backward as Crowley barrelled at full speed into the other intruder, sending both of them crashing to the floor. Crowley tried to jump to his feet as soon as they impacted, but the angel was faster than he’d anticipated. He grabbed one of Crowley’s shins and yanked hard, and a moment later the demon’s head contacted sharply with the floor as they reversed positions.

Crowley gasped, willing the stars to leave his vision. The dark-haired angel was on top of him in an instant, pinning him to the floor, and a moment later Crowley’s head snapped to the side as the angel’s fist met his cheekbone.

Over the blood pounding in his ears, Crowley heard a terrific crash from somewhere to his left, and he distantly heard Aziraphale swear loudly.

“Demon scum,” the angel pinning Crowley growled, dragging the demon’s attention back to his attacker. The angel’s eyes, as grey and colourless as his suit, drilled down mercilessly into Crowley’s. He paused only to take a fortifying breath before delivering a fearsome left hook to the demon’s cheek to match his right.

This time Crowley tasted copper.

Spots jumped across the demon’s vision, cartwheeling and pulsing wild colours. He was still struggling to recover when another blow came from the right, hard and fast, and he felt a couple of teeth come unmoored. 

Crowley’s head turned automatically back to the front, already anticipating the next blow as he choked on fresh blood, but it never came. Instead, there was a blur of motion and a flash of tartan wool, and the weight atop him vanished.

Crowley coughed and gasped painfully for breath, wheezing as he managed to roll over onto his side.

He heard a sharp snap from somewhere behind him, followed by a heavy thud.

Crowley spat out a mouthful of blood and, wheezing in a broken breath, staggered unevenly to his feet, wiping his mouth shakily with the back of his hand.

His vision had barely stopped spinning when he registered, not three metres away, the dark-haired angel dragging a very sluggish-looking Aziraphale to his feet by the front of his jumper.

Crowley was starting forward unsteadily, determined to help, when he caught sight of the blond angel lunging at him from the left. Crowley dodged backwards just in time to avoid being hit head-on, but the two of them still ended up slamming into the floor in a tangle of limbs. Crowley’s hip impacted the floor hard, but he wasted no time in hastily aiming his foot at the closest part of the angel within easy reach. He heard a grunt of pain as his foot contacted with a satisfying crunch. A moment later the heel of the angel’s shoe slammed into his own neck. 

Crowley wheezed in pain and focussed on kicking his way further away from the angel, half-crawling along the bookshop floor.

Then the angel’s foot hit him squarely in the back of the head and he was out for a moment, coughing and struggling to keep his lunch down as the fresh wave of pain rolled over him.

When his vision cleared, he tilted his head up and was just in time to see the dark-haired angel slamming Aziraphale into the wall of the bookshop, hard. Aziraphale’s hands scrabbled at the other angel’s arms, but he didn’t seem to be seeing straight and his fingers didn’t find purchase. The angel pulled him forward and slammed him back into the wall a second time. 

The gasping sound of all of the air leaving Aziraphale’s lungs was audible even from Crowley’s distance as Aziraphale’s hands stopped fighting and fell limply to his sides. The dark-haired angel let go and Aziraphale slid down the wall into an awkward sitting position. He stayed there, motionless, two lines of blood running down his cheek as his eyes slid shut.

Crowley pushed himself to his hands and knees. The angel he’d been engaged in a kicking match with had gained his feet and was advancing towards his partner and Aziraphale’s unconscious form. They seemed to have momentarily forgotten him.

The dark-haired angel reached down for Aziraphale’s shoulder. Crowley made a decision.

“Wait!” Crowley shouted, voice cracking halfway through.

The angel with his hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder paused and turned ever-so-slowly back to Crowley. He gave the demon a look both suspicious and incredulous. “What?”

Crowley drew a breath, and it caught in his throat. He raised a hand weakly and closed his eyes, miracling himself back to health.

He took another breath, and this one was steadier. He opened his eyes and pushed himself all the way to his feet. He re-materialised his sunglasses to their place on his nose, tugged on the sleeves of his suit jacket, and brushed off his cuffs. The two angels stared at him.

“You don’t want him,” Crowley said, gesturing dismissively at Aziraphale as he struggled to arrange his voice into a suitably disdainful tone. “He’s not what you're looking for.”

“Yeah, _right,_ ” the dark-haired angel said, starting to turn away.

“You want to know how I corrupted him, right?” Crowley said quickly.

The angel paused.

“Enchanted him? Bespelled? Yep. Well, you’re right about that, by the way.”

Both angels turned to look at him, though the dark-haired one kept his hand firmly on Aziraphale’s shoulder.

Crowley forced himself to turn to the side and take a few steps, feigning indifference. “You got me there, boys. Guilty as charged. But, _ohhh,_  it was a good spell.” Crowley chuckled, taking a moment to quickly plan out his next words. He’d never been a big fan of improv. “And, besides, it’s not like he _knows_ what I did to him. Think it through, fellas—if I brought him under my power using demonic means—which I most certainly did—how would he knows the means, only the result? And as you can tell, I’ve got him _squarely_ where I want him _.”_ Crowley chuckled again, darkly this time. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. “He’ll never tell you anything, of course, not only because the spell won’t allow him to, but because he just doesn’t know anything. I'm afraid this is just a poorly thought-out plan on your end, really.”

The dark-haired angel narrowed his eyes but didn’t move, hand still on Aziraphale’s shoulder. The unconscious angel didn’t seem to be stirring, even a little, something Crowley pushed hurriedly from his mind.

The demon swallowed and swung around to pace in the other direction, forcing his shoulders to relax into indifference. “I mean, you can take him if you like—go ahead—but you won’t _get_ anything from him.” Another thought occurred to Crowley. “And besides, doesn’t harming another angel bruise your ol' feathery souls? Something about brother harming brother and a great big Fall for our old friend Luci?”

“This isn’t like that,” snapped the dark-haired angel irritably.

“I’m sure it’s not,” Crowley assured him smoothly, raising a hand complacently. “But that’s not for me to decide.”

“You've got that right,” spat the blond angel, who was sporting a large red mark on his cheek from Crowley’s heel which he hadn’t bothered to heal yet. “You’re a demon—lowest of the low.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Crowley interjected, holding up a finger. “Not quite your run-of-the-mill demon, I’m afraid. Name’s Crowley, remember? Not only did I aid in the derailing of the _Apocalypse_ with the help of my—” here Crowley glanced back down at the motionless Aziraphale, “delightfully-bespelled angel slave, but you seem to be forgetting that shortly after I took a nosedive with our old mutual pal, I slithered my way into a certain very exclusive garden and offered a lovely young lady the ripest, reddest fruit around.”

“The First Tempter,” hissed the blond angel, with enough disgust to make a demon proud.

“Precisely,” Crowley said, dusting off one of his lapels impressively. “That’s me. If you want to build a castle, why would you take the housekeeper when you could have the architect? Why take Eve,” here he gestured at Aziraphale, “when you could have the Serpent?” 

It took a few seconds for the angels to process this, and then the dark-haired one smiled. The expression didn’t work well with his face.

“Excellent idea,” he said. “Why indeed?” He took a half-step towards Crowley and then stopped. His fingers were still brushing Aziraphale’s shoulder. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “But why are you telling us this?”

Crowley shrugged, keeping the motion as natural as possible. He turned quickly and paced once, trying to hide his nervousness in his stride. “No reason in particular. Or, perhaps I should say, reasons that don’t involve you.”

At that moment, Aziraphale twitched. Crowley noticed immediately, watching the angel’s chin jerk up slightly, his hands fluttering in his lap. The grey-suited angels, both staring at Crowley, didn’t notice.

He had to wrap this up.

“Tell you what,” Crowley said hastily, locking eyes with the dark-haired angel. “I’ve got a little message for your boss,” he invented wildly. “Michael. He’s still running that show, right? Private business. You give me a little lift up, five minutes with the winged ponce, and I might let you in on a couple trade secrets. You follow?”

Aziraphale’s head was rising higher, a hand going to the back of his skull. The dark-haired angel’s hand had left his shoulder and was now hovering an inch above it.

He exchanged oblique glances with his blond-haired brother, and the latter nodded slightly.

The angels started forward, and Crowley couldn’t stop himself from taking a half step backwards. He knew what doubtlessly awaited him once Above got their hands on him, but he’d bought Aziraphale some time at least. Crowley could escape, or bargain his way out once they realised he really didn’t know anything. It was the best way.

The angels’ hands closed around his arms, one on either side.

“You’d better not be lying, demon,” the blond angel growled. Crowley ignored him, staring past them at Aziraphale.

The angel was stirring further, starting to sit up, blinking and gingerly touching the back of his head. 

A white light started to rise around the grey-suited angels and their captive, and Crowley realised detachedly that they were taking the direct lift up.

Aziraphale shook his head and looked up, and his dazed eyes met Crowley’s. In an instant his gaze cleared. He surged to his feet, though it was closer to staggering than the angel probably would have wanted to admit. He opened his mouth.

Crowley subtly shook his head, light spilling around the edges of his vision, narrowing his field of view to contain only Aziraphale. The demon just had time to mouth “run” before the light blotted Aziraphale out entirely, and in a flurry of feathers they were gone.


	2. The Attentions of Heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mature rating is for this chapter.

“It seems your pattern of deceit continues.”

Crowley ignored the voice, struggling to focus on spitting out a mouthful of blood with a minimum of pain. His head hung forward, blood and saliva dripping off his chin. He’d given up on personal hygiene some time ago.

“Blood sacrifice at midnight doesn’t work, regardless of the amount of chanting carried out,” the voice continued stiffly, a hint of annoyance in its tone.

Crowley closed his eyes, trying to centre himself. He was dizzy, his vision spinning even with his eyes closed, careening wildly left and right and occasionally shifting up and down the colour spectrum. The edge of his chin bit into the heavy silver collar bound around his neck; the metal was carved with rows of glyphs which leached his magic from him. Identical manacles ringed his wrists, pulling his arms up halfway above his head and wrenching his shoulders back.

“Are you listening to me, demon?”

There was a sudden flare of white-hot pain along the leading edge of Crowley’s left wing, spearing right between two bones.

Crowley threw his head back, squeezing his eyes shut tighter and struggling to swallow the scream building in his throat. His eyes burned, but no wetness welled up. It wasn’t in the nature of demons to shed tears.

_“Demon?”_

The blade—Crowley knew it was a blade; knew it from its previous acquaintance with most of his borrowed mortal body and immortal wings—bit deeper and twisted. Crowley’s wing screamed as the blade forced his radius and ulna apart, grating along the edges of the bones, and then the scream reached the demon’s throat.

“Yes! Yes! Dammit!” Crowley screeched, and a moment later the blade retreated. Crowley gasped as a fresh wave of pain rolled over him and his wing started shaking uncontrollably. Both of his wings, long, gleaming, and jet black, were stretched to their full extent against the smooth white stone wall behind him, pinned in place by large silver stakes driven right through the primary joint, directly under the metacarpus.

Crowley had long since learned to manage the pain to some degree, cordoning off the endless throbbing that pulsed down both of his trembling wings with every heartbeat, a bizarre side effect of having his wings manifested with the mortal corporation.

Occasionally, when his tormentor left, he would allow himself to gasp out wordless, tearless sobs, each building on the last until he was shaking with pain, sometimes trying to tear his wings straight off the massive silver pins, no matter how many bones he broke. As if that wasn’t enough, his tormentor had recently taken a fancy to pulling Crowley’s feathers out by force when the demon wouldn’t comply with his demands.

“The blood sacrifice didn’t work,” his captor informed him again, tones clipped. “Another lie.”

Crowley swallowed thickly and dropped his head forward, a fresh wave of nausea crashing over him as he felt something warm and sticky slide down his wing, rolling down his feathers. “Was it done—at a new—moo—n?” Crowley stammered out, cursing his stuttering voice.

He felt rather than saw his tormentor take a step towards him, felt the angel’s presence impressing upon him like a physical weight.

Crowley didn't know how an angel could even get away with torture, but apparently there was a loophole in there somewhere about traitorous demons. That didn’t mean he had to enjoy it so damn much, though.

“Yes.” The angel’s tone was clipped. “Everything was to your specifications. It didn’t work.”

Crowley drew a deep, rattling breath and forced his head up. His eyes, clouded but still as bright of a yellow as they’d ever been, met the light blue irises of his tormentor. 

That was the worst part, Crowley had always thought. The eyes. They were just a shade darker than Aziraphale’s, but in the light reflected off the white wall behind him, the resemblance was unnerving. “Well, it ne—needs to be done by a de—emon, ob—viously,” Crowley forced out between shudders. “Hell—sp—spawn and all th—th—at.” 

The angel’s eyes narrowed. “I doubt that very much.” The angel’s blade, made of some very fine metal so silvery it appeared almost white, raised to dig gently into the bottom of Crowley’s chin, forcing his head up even further, until the back of his skull rammed into the wall. “How about telling me the truth this time?”

Crowley swallowed nervously, feeling the blade sharp and cold against his sweat-drenched skin. “I ha—ave,” he protested weakly.

The angel gritted his teeth in anger, and a moment later the blade buried itself in Crowley’s left shoulder, scratching along bone jarringly as it bit very deeply into muscle.

Crowley cried out before he could stop himself, trying to jerk away as the world spun and flared bright red.

He came to a moment later, realising abruptly as he did so that he must have blacked out. His shoulder felt like a white-hot poker was being dug into it, but the blade was back in the angel’s hand.

“No lies this time, Crowley,” the angel said, voice low and tense. “I’ve received orders to intensify our time together if you continue with your…recalcitrance. We can get more…experimental. You still have _so_ many feathers left to play with. And what do you think would happen if we tossed around a little holy water, hmm? Just a little, you understand; can’t have you dying on us, can we?”

Crowley blanched at the thought, though he wasn’t sure if he could get much paler than he was already. It seemed to him that a large part of his blood was currently residing on the wrong side of his skin or pooled on the floor in ominous dark circles.

“So, let’s try that again.” The angel took a step forward, his huge white wings unfolding partway behind him, shadowing his figure. He raised the knife to Crowley’s cheek and traced the point across his shivering skin. “What _exactly_ did you do to the principality?”

Crowley wheezed in a breath and exhaled shakily. He eyed his captor with what little remained of his flagging strength. He looked like he was serious about the holy water. Crowley’s shoulder was still blazing like a wildfire, and his wings sent regular throbs of pain through him. His wrists burned in their cuffs, and his collarbone felt raw where the heavy collar dug into it. His vision momentarily split before realigning.

“I didn’t—didn't  _do_ anything,” Crowley forced out at last, feeling his breath hitch. 

Crowley had been trapped here for what he estimated through a haze was several weeks; that was long enough for Aziraphale to make it to somewhere safe and batten down the hatches, right? Maybe he could give up the game now and go home. Or maybe they’d at least kill him.

“I’m warn—” began the angel darkly, the tip of the blade digging into Crowley’s chin, but the demon carried on over him weakly.

“No—spell. No magic. Just—we were—just helping each other out. That’s all.”

The angel paused, the blade momentarily lifting off Crowley’s skin. He studied Crowley for a moment. Then he reached forward and, taking the demon’s chin in his unyielding grip, forced Crowley’s head further up into the light.

Crowley winced as the movement dragged at his wounds and bonds. The angel leaned closer, studying him carefully. His eyes tracked over Crowley’s face; the demon looked away. He didn’t want to see Aziraphale’s eyes staring at him like he was a traitor. He’d bought the angel enough time. He would be okay now, right? …Right?

His captor gave a short bark of laughter and let Crowley go. The demon gasped as a fresh wave of pain hit him as he rocked back into his regular position, chains clanking darkly. His shoulder was white-hot again, and he could feel blood streaming warmly down his torn shirt, spilling across his left clavicle. The angel took a few steps back, laughing.

“You actually believe that, don’t you?” he asked, sounding far too amused about the whole thing. “You really believe that Aziraphale—what? Came to you for _help?_ A _demon?”_

He laughed again, and Crowley felt his cheeks—inexplicably—colouring in embarrassment.

“Oh, little demon.” The angel took a step forward and tapped Crowley’s cheek almost affectionately with the flat side of the blade. “If only you’d heard the news.”

Crowley felt himself stiffen, shaking with a sudden burst of fear and pain. _What news?_

“You see,” the angel continued, taking Crowley’s raspy silence as leave to continue, “just three days ago, would you like to guess who came up for a little visit? He walked straight through Heaven’s gates, not a care in the world." He paused, as though waiting for Crowley to respond, but the demon only stared at him in transfixed horror. The angel smiled sickly and continued, "why, it was no one but your little _pal_ Aziraphale!”

Crowley felt his blood freeze, heart skipping a beat. If Aziraphale really was here, that meant—that had to mean—

“And do you know what he did? He went straight to Michael—you remember Michael, and your bizarre little speech to him about, what was it? Whether some Bavarian prince was wandering around in Heaven?—anyway, he went straight up to Michael, and said, ‘Through the grace of God and the passage of time, the demon’s spell upon me has been lifted, and I can see clearly again. I see the error of my ways, and seek to repent.’ But wait—here comes the best part.” The angel grinned at Crowley, who was struggling very hard to remember he had to keep breathing.

“He said, ‘I have sinned under the control of the demon known as Crowley, and I wish to make right these transgressions. I wish to win justice by exacting upon him my righteous revenge.’” 

Crowley’s eyebrows drew together. He didn’t understand; didn’t know if he wanted to. Aziraphale had said  _what?_

The angel chuckled again, rocking back on his heels. “So that’s what he thought of your _help_ , eh, demon?” He retreated to the table sitting near the door, and picked up a white cloth. He started wiping down the blade.

Crowley recognised this distantly as preparation for his tormentor’s departure, from those times when the demon had been conscious enough by the end of the session to notice. They hadn’t been going for very long, but maybe he wanted Crowley to stew on the latest news.

“Hear that, demon?” the angel chuckled. “Righteous revenge.”

Crowley’s heart seemed to be constricting, and he couldn’t tell if it was a side effect of the hole in his shoulder or not. His head felt very heavy so he dropped it back down, letting it hang forward and bite into the heavy collar.

“Hmph,” the angel said to himself, clearly extremely entertained by the whole thing. “Some idea of _help.”_

 

~~***~~

 

Four days and seven sessions later, the large, plated door swung open.

Crowley reflexively flinched back, both from the additional light and the pain he knew would be coming.

The last several sessions had been particularly intense, with his tormentor digging deeper for information about the spell. Crowley didn’t tell him anything, of course, because he didn’t remember the spell.

There had been a spell, hadn’t there? It was all getting jumbled up in Crowley’s head. At first he’d thought there wasn’t, but then Aziraphale had freed himself from it, so didn’t that mean there must have been one in the first place? He wasn’t sure what was truth anymore and what was fiction. The pain kept muddling things up in his head whenever he tried to think things through. 

But whatever had happened, Aziraphale had turned against him. Or maybe he’d never even been with him. For some reason, that thought hurt more than the waves of pain crashing over him from his throbbing wings.

Three sharp snaps broke through Crowley’s haze of confusion, the sound frighteningly familiar. Precision footsteps on stone.

Crowley’s captor stepped forward, white wings gleaming as they spread behind him. Crowley kept his head down. Meekness sometimes won him a reprieve.

“Little demon,” the angel said, dark delight dripping off his words as he stalked closer. 

Crowley didn’t look at him, though he saw the flash of the blade in his periphery. He flinched back automatically.

The angel stopped a foot away, and the blade came up to tap Crowley’s jaw in an almost contemplative fashion. It trailed down his neck, pausing where his pulse beat against the cool metal before jumping over the heavy collar and coming to a stop right in front of his left clavicle. The tip of the knife dug in, whittling a hole in his skin next to the deeper gash, which had finally clotted with thick streaks of dried blood.

Crowley gritted his teeth but thought a pained whine might have escaped. He bit the edge of his tongue, tensing his shoulders against the pain.

Then, instead of the blade plunging forward as it had in times past, it retreated. The angel stuck his head forward, closer to Crowley’s. Crowley didn’t look him in the eye.

“Lucky you,” the angel said, voice low and oddly personal. “You have a visitor.”

Crowley’s head jerked up in surprise. Before he could say anything, the angel jabbed him hard in the stomach with the handle of the knife.

Crowley gasped as he tried to automatically curl around himself, the movement straining his shoulders, wrists, and pinned wings and sending a fresh wave of pain crashing over him.

He was still trying to blink away the spots before his eyes, struggling to force his vision to steady, when he realised that his tormentor had moved to the side, curling his huge wings in after him. And Crowley realised that he had not entered alone.

Standing behind him, not far from the now-closed door, wings carefully tucked behind him, shoulders tensed and hands clenched into fists at his side, was Aziraphale.

Crowley’s throat closed abruptly and he broke into stuttering wheezes for a few seconds, struggling to marshal his thoughts and keep the pain at bay. _What was Aziraphale doing here?_

The idea stumbled into Crowley’s head that perhaps he was here to rescue him—they were on the same side after all, weren’t they?—but then his tormentor’s humourless laughter echoed in his mind: righteous revenge. And the spell—had the spell been real too?

While Crowley was still gasping for breath and trying to parse all this out, Aziraphale took a single step forward. Crowley dragged his head up, forcing himself to shoulder through his pain-riddled thoughts and just take the angel in.

Aziraphale was dressed in tan slacks and a jumper as per the usual, and his golden hair was largely uncombed, giving him a fearful appearance. His wings—as gorgeous as any the demon had ever seen and as white as snow—were half-unfurling behind him, long silky primaries almost brushing the floor. 

But Crowley searched desperately for the principality's eyes and, after a few broken shivers, managed to find them. Aziraphale’s eyes, Crowley felt suddenly, blindingly certain, would tell him what the truth was—if the spell was real or not; what was fact and what was fiction; if they had in fact been nothing less than sworn enemies. They would tell him why Aziraphale was here, and what was in store for him.

The angel’s eyes were the exact same familiar shade Crowley remembered them as—but they were narrowed in anger. Fury was building inside those icy irises, ready to overflow at any moment. It was an anger unlike any he had seen outside of Hell’s deepest circles.

Crowley shrank back in fear, his chains clinking together hollowly. His usual tormentor may be skilled in torture, but at least for him it wasn’t personal. _Righteous revenge._

“Give me the knife,” Aziraphale growled, and Crowley fought back another round of shaking and nausea as his wings pulled weakly against the silver pins, desperate to get away at any cost.

The other angel smirked and leaned over, handing Aziraphale the knife by the blade, offering him the shining black handle. 

Aziraphale accepted it easily, his hand closing over the grip with a terrifying finality.

Crowley swallowed and tried unsuccessfully to rein in his shaking, feeling his breaths coming fast and shallow. He carefully averted his eyes, staring at the bottom hem of the angel’s jumper as Aziraphale approached slowly, deliberately.

He distantly registered his original tormentor moving forward a little, evidently to get a better view.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Aziraphale said, voice dark and hard, “for a long time.”

Crowley’s heart was in his throat, hammering against the heavy metal collar in its struggle to be free. He didn’t think he’d been more terrified in his entire life.

Aziraphale took one more step closer, and now Crowley was within easy reach. The demon did not look up. He could not bear to see that anger again, not in those eyes.

Aziraphale raised the blade and lunged forward—Crowley flinched and recoiled, wings screaming at the movement—but the pain never came.

Instead, there was a short cry and then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

Crowley cracked his eyes open, forcing his head up. Not two metres away, his tormentor was kneeling on the ground, eyes wide, mouth slack, gasping. Aziraphale was standing in front of him, wings half-raised. It took Crowley a moment to register that the blade that had so ravaged him was buried up to the hilt in his tormentor's chest.

“Brother—!” gasped the angel, a hand jerking upwards to where Aziraphale still had a grip on the knife.

“You’re no brother of mine,” Aziraphale hissed, and twisted the blade.

The angel gave a wet cough and convulsed twice before his body started to collapse, head drooping to the side. Aziraphale pulled the blade out with a sound like a drain being unplugged.

Crowley gasped in shock, still shaking uncontrollably. Was he hallucinating?

Aziraphale didn’t move for a second, and when he took a deep breath, Crowley was surprised to hear it rattle.

The angel turned and Crowley shied away instinctively. But then Aziraphale was in front of him, and one hand was gingerly brushing over the wound in Crowley’s shoulder, the other gently touching his cheek. The knife was gone.

“Crowley? _Crowley?”_ Aziraphale’s voice was much higher than it had been a moment ago, and sounded…terrified?

Crowley forced his head up a couple of inches, his sluggish brain telling him it couldn’t be real. It was a trick, or a hallucination—it had to be.

He didn’t remember the last time he’d felt so gentle a touch.

“Crowley? Talk to me, please. Oh dear  _God,_ what have they _done_ to you?”

Crowley blinked at him owlishly, confused. Aziraphale sounded genuinely upset, and when he finally met the angel’s eyes—that clear light blue, and shining like crystal—they were filled with nothing but horror, worry, and a terror so immense it seemed to fill his entire being.

Crowley felt his eyebrows draw together, his lips parting slightly. Maybe it _was_ the other way around, he thought with confusion. Maybe there hadn’t been a spell—maybe they _had_ been something other than enemies—

“Zira?” Crowley rasped, voice hoarse. The nickname presented itself easily to the demon’s muddled brain, the syllables sounding familiar on his lips.

When the angel gave a little relieved sob and a shaky smile, a strange warm feeling coiled around Crowley’s bruised chest. The pressure on his cheek grew firmer, the warmth of the angel’s hand hot against his chilled skin.

“Don’t worry,” Aziraphale said. “I’m getting you out of here.”

_Ah,_ Crowley thought distantly. _So rescue it is_.

Then Aziraphale was gone, and it took Crowley a few seconds to realise he’d moved several feet to the side, out of the demon’s line of sight.

He felt Aziraphale's hand press against the leading edge of his right wing, and a sudden massive wave of terror crashed over Crowley. He broke into a fit of violent, racking shudders as goosebumps jumped across his icy, sweat-slicked skin. 

He had felt that pressure before. His old tormentor had anchored his hand on that exact spot, pressing hard enough to bruise as he forced the demon’s wing still. Then he had wound his other hand around Crowley’s long ebony feathers and, one by one, ripped out half of the demon’s primaries. 

The association was too strong, swamping over Crowley in a second, overwriting his earlier shaky conclusions with a wave of frantic fear. _This_ was why Aziraphale was here, he felt suddenly, terrifyingly certain,  _this_ was how he would take his revenge—the angel was here to finish the job, starting by tearing out the rest of his precious, fragile, blood-streaked feathers—

There was a blinding flash of pain in his right wing and Crowley screamed before he could stop himself. The pain dragged on for a second, flared even higher, and then slowly throbbed weaker. He thought he heard Aziraphale swear.

Crowley gasped for breath, feeling his eyes burn with the pain as a fresh bout tore up his shoulder. _It_ was _a trick_ , he thought disjointedly through the searing wall of pain and betrayal. It had been a trick to get him to lower his guard, to make him think he would be saved, to break him even further—

It took Crowley a few breathless moments to realise that his wing had half-collapsed against his side. Crowley stared blankly down at it in confusion, chin biting into the heavy metal collar. His remaining feathers still seemed to be intact, though there was a huge dark gap near the joint, where the massive silver pin had been driven through it.

_Or maybe…not a trick?_ he thought uncertainly, making a sharp U-turn from his former position so quickly it actually made him dizzy. His entire wing ached from being trapped in one position for so long, and regular waves of pain were still crashing over him from the burning in the main joint and the feather roots, but he—he was free!

The demon was still caught between elation and crippling pain when a fresh wave rolled over him from the other wing.

This time he felt himself black out, and when he came to some time later, he could feel both wings pressing against his sides limply, their weight bulky and no longer familiar. There was a pressure on his right cheek, and it took him a few seconds to register that Aziraphale was holding his head up and to the side. Something long and cold was pressed up against his jaw, and he could dimly hear Aziraphale grumbling something.

Crowley took a jagged breath, and his vision started to return in swimming waves. 

“Hang on, my dear, don’t move,” Aziraphale said urgently, and the demon was all too willing to comply.

The cold thing near his jaw wiggled back and forth and then suddenly jerked downwards. There was a sharp click very near his ear, and the cold metal vanished. A moment later, Aziraphale moved his hand off his cheek and then the heavy metal collar that had been weighing down on him since he had arrived was gone.

Crowley took a hitching breath, clavicles burning but liberated at long last. He felt himself start shaking again, this time with tearless sobs. He was actually going to get out of here. He was actually going to be free.

“Almost there, almost there, I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, and his voice was strained and worried. “Just have to get the rest of these bloody glyphs off.”

Crowley swallowed thickly, and a moment later felt the cuff around his right wrist pop free. He was slowly losing everything that had kept him locked in position, and he felt his weight begin to sag down onto his feet, which weren’t used to taking it. He began to list forward, knees collapsing.

Aziraphale was there in a flash, pushing Crowley back up with a hand carefully placed on his sternum. There were some long cuts there that flared at the pressure, but Crowley pushed the nausea down.

The second cuff took longer; possibly Aziraphale didn’t have as good of an angle. Crowley leaned forward heavily against the angel’s hand as he struggled to keep his breathing steady around the catches in his throat and battering waves of pain from his wings that kept making his vision blur. 

The demon’s free hand struggled upwards and grasped loosely at the sleeve of Aziraphale’s jumper, feeling the material soft and thick and very real beneath his trembling, frozen fingers. This close to the angel, he could smell the faint woody smells of books and tea clinging to him; the scent was so familiar and comforting that he felt sure he would have cried had he been able. It smelled like home.

The cuff popped free, and Crowley felt himself falling forwards.

Aziraphale was there in an instant, trying to keep him upright, but Crowley’s legs refused to support him. 

“No, no, no, hang on, Crowley, stay with me,” Aziraphale said urgently, but there was little the demon could do.

Crowley slid awkwardly downwards, legs collapsing completely, and he might have made it to the floor without too much difficulty had the movement not jostled his wings, pulling them in new directions. A burst of pain flared from the exposed bones and rattled all the way up to his head. As his knees hit the floor a new wave blossomed from his shoulders and hips, and everything went black.


	3. Black and White

There was a warm pressure on Crowley's cheek, and another on his clavicles, right over the bruised skin. A tingling feeling was washing over him in waves, battering back the bursts of pain causing stars behind his eyes. 

He was aware of a noise—a voice, he thought, urgent and worried. It was distant and muted.

A fresh wave of pain blossomed from Crowley’s shoulder and then abruptly receded before it could break over him. The demon felt himself being shaken, felt his bruised and stiffened muscles scream in protest.

There was a fresh tingling sensation, and Crowley felt his awareness suddenly snap back into his body. He was no longer floating, partially detached from the pain, trying to will consciousness to remain with him—he was grounded properly for the first time in days, maybe weeks, and he could feel every inch of his damaged, aching body. The voice in his head consolidated itself into harsh, worried words as a fresh round of tingles ran through his shoulder.

“Dammit, Crowley! Come on, come on, _take it!”_

There was a pause, a small shake. Then: _“Bugger.”_

Crowley swallowed, the motion taking longer than he thought it should have. The warm tingles trailed off, and he felt the light pressures on his cheek and clavicles still.

“Crowley?” 

The demon drew a shaky breath and forced his eyes open. He was resting half on the floor, half in Aziraphale’s lap. The angel had one hand on his cheek, another on his chest. Aziraphale’s face, filled with undisguised concern, hovered only a foot from his own.

Crowley opened his mouth, automatically running a tongue over his chapped lips. “Thought angels weren’t supposed to swear,” he croaked.

Aziraphale’s face broke into a broad, relieved grin, which Crowley pointedly ignored. He tried to sit up, and the angel helped him with a gentle arm around his shoulders.

“I wasn’t sure if my powers were working,” Aziraphale said, still sounding worried. “Not exactly demon compatible. And the blo—bug—horrible shackles had those glyphs on them. I didn't know if the whole room wasn’t warded against miracles as well, as a precaution.”

Crowley shrugged. The motion jerked his wounded shoulder and he flinched before he could stop himself. It was a sharp, stabbing pain, but so much more manageable than before. At least he could see straight.

Aziraphale’s healing magic had done a world of good; his head was clear for the first time in weeks. And now that he could get a cohesive thought through, all his jumbled misgivings of the last few days fell into place.

There had been no spell, of course, Crowley remembered; he had lied about that, lied to give Aziraphale time to run. But for some reason Aziraphale had come after him, come to save him—

“What're you doing here, angel?” Crowley rasped, raising a hand to run over his dry, parched throat. His tormentor had never bothered to give him any water.

Aziraphale gave him a surprised look. “Rescuing you, of course!”

Crowley opened his mouth to say something ungrateful about how he’d had it under control, but the words died in his mouth. Instead he went with a dry, “Right.”

Aziraphale made a noise of disbelief but rose halfway to his feet, reaching down for the demon. “Well, we’re not out of the woods yet,” Aziraphale said. “Can you walk? I know the quickest way out of here, but we may have to run for it.”

Crowley took the angel’s offered hand, and Aziraphale helped him to his feet. As soon as he'd risen a metre off the ground, the demon’s head began to spin. As though on cue, his legs broke into shivers and his shoulder returned to its incessant throbbing.

Crowley gritted his teeth and forced himself to straighten all the way up. His vision swam to static and gradually ebbed back to normal. He found himself leaning heavily against Aziraphale and pointedly looked the other way. 

“I’m about out of magic right now,” Aziraphale said apologetically, putting an arm around Crowley’s shoulders. “Once we’re Earthbound I’ll heal you fully.”

Crowley nodded, pushing the pain from his aching shoulder aside. There was a bigger picture here.

Aziraphale took a step forward, and Crowley copied him. He tried to automatically winch his wings into a folded position as he moved forward, but a bolt of pain shot through him at the movement. He staggered, momentarily losing his footing as his vision faded to black and back to colour. He found himself listing heavily against Aziraphale again, one hand scrunched tightly in the angel’s jumper for support. To his credit, the angel didn’t say anything.

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and hissed, half from pain and half from frustration. He glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of one of his wings, dipping low to the ground. The leading edge was a mess of broken feathers and broad red streaks, with ragged gashes and dark bloody holes where the three-inch-thick silver stakes had been driven. He realised that he could see the white of bone in several places, and shuddered as another wave of pain broke over him. He turned his head back around, screwing his eyes shut and attempting to forget what he had just seen. 

He knew what the problem was now—Aziraphale could passably heal a corporation occupied by a demon, but Crowley’s wings were a manifestation of his demonic self, and thus outside the angel’s ability to heal. Crowley would have healed them himself, but the glyph-etched collar and manacles had sapped his magic. He’d be powerless for hours at least.

“Are you okay, my dear?” Aziraphale asked after a moment, when Crowley kept leaning against him, eyes closed, breathing shallowly.

Crowley forced his eyes open, shuddering as his wings burned. He tried to force the image of the dark holes near his alulas out of his mind. “Grand,” he grunted.

Aziraphale’s mouth drew itself into a thin line, but there wasn’t much the angel could do. 

“Let’sss just get out of here,” Crowley hissed, painfully propping himself back onto his own two feet. His calves quivered, but held for the moment.

Aziraphale gave him a second to get his balance and then started forward, Crowley hobbling beside him and leaning against the angel’s shoulder for support. The demon made sure not to so much as twitch his wings, letting them trail behind him on the ground, fully extended. It seemed like the least painful option.

They reached the door to the prison and Aziraphale carefully deposited Crowley by the wall next to it. As the angel folded his wings behind his back, Crowley thought for a moment he saw a flash of black among the white feathers.

“Wait here a mo,” the angel whispered before opening the door and slipping through it. 

Crowley, leaning with his good shoulder against the wall, flinched away from the sudden bright light spilling through the crack. His eyes adjusted slightly and he took a few seconds to stare at the sliver of Heaven visible through the ajar door. Aziraphale’s voice floated faintly through the gap. 

Crowley was painfully aware of the body of his dead tormentor just a few metres behind him, killed by—of all people— _Aziraphale,_ but the demon kept his eyes locked on that bright shred of freedom. The last thing he needed right now was flashbacks.

There was a sharp cry from beyond the door, but Crowley didn’t think it sounded like Aziraphale, so he remained leaning heavily against the wall of the prison. His stomach was churning painfully, and he had to keep closing his eyes as his wings ebbed pain into him. 

A few seconds later the door swung open again and Aziraphale pulled Crowley carefully across the threshold. The demon blinked rapidly against the fresh barrage of light.

They were standing on a white-bricked road which wound its way down a short hill and then joined with a larger thoroughfare. Near the side of the road lay another angel, this one looking vaguely familiar to Crowley. Her wings spread to either side of her body, red hair lying in a halo around her head, where a fresh bruise was blossoming on her temple. Her elegant scabbard was empty, but she was still breathing. Crowley, leaning heavily against Aziraphale’s shoulder again, glanced over at him, and was surprised to see the sword in his hand, burning softly with a brilliant white flame.

Crowley raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

Aziraphale started forward, but not down the path. Instead, he headed down the hill and around the building, crossing grass so pristine it would have made Crowley’s own plant collection even greener with envy.

Crowley kept by Aziraphale’s side, silently grateful for the angel’s arm around his shoulders, keeping him moving forwards even when his legs didn’t want to support him. 

Aziraphale rocked to a halt once they’d almost reached the back corner of the building, and Crowley swayed forward dangerously before Aziraphale could reel him back in.

“S—s—sorry,” Crowley managed, feeling a fresh shudder rock through him as his wings jolted against the ground.

Aziraphale stuck his head around the corner of the building while Crowley leaned against its side for support. The white stone felt cool to the touch, and Crowley slumped against it gratefully, careful to angle his wings so they wouldn’t get jostled.

Aziraphale shifted his weight back a moment later and offered Crowley his arm. Crowley, whose vision had recently doubled and stayed that way for several seconds, took it.

The angel glanced back around the corner of the building and then back to Crowley. Then he looked past Crowley, eyes running over the demon’s long black wings. His mouth twisted.

Crowley looked back as well, belatedly realising what the problem was. The wings of angels were white, reflecting their status and the supposed purity of their souls. The wings of demons were black, and Crowley’s were no exception. 

Aziraphale seemed to come to a decision. “Come on,” he said, adjusting his grip on Crowley’s shoulder. “Keep your head down and go as fast as you can.”

A moment later Aziraphale’s wings unfurled from his back, one reaching around Crowley’s own trailing wings to meet the angel’s hand on the demon’s opposite shoulder. The other stretched out behind them, effectively shielding at least some of Crowley’s damningly black feathers.

Aziraphale started forward, Crowley staggering along beside him. The angel broke into a quick trot and Crowley pushed his tingling legs forward as fast as he could, letting Aziraphale’s arm propel him forward as much as he moved of his own accord. The demon caught glimpses of more swaths of emerald grass and another white-bricked road as they surged forward. Remembering Aziraphale’s advice, Crowley dropped his head down and focussed on limiting his stumbling. Aziraphale’s wing boarded off half of his field of vision, and the angel himself the other half, all white feathers and tartan wool.

Then all of a sudden Aziraphale slowed his pace, and the tightening of his wing around Crowley’s shoulder was the only thing that kept the demon from pitching forward as he stumbled to a halt. But Aziraphale kept moving, walking in a slight tangent to their previous path. Crowley kept his head down and tried to shrink his wings under Aziraphale’s white feathers.

“You there!” shouted a voice from somewhere to Crowley’s right. “Halt! Stay where you are!”

And then suddenly they were running again, Crowley staggering up a slight incline as Aziraphale all but shoved him in front of himself. Then Aziraphale’s wing abruptly pulled back on Crowley’s shoulders as the angel skidded to a halt. Crowley fell forwards anyway, tripping over his own unsteady feet.

There was a flurry of white feathers and then Aziraphale was gone. Crowley propped himself up onto his elbows, blinking rapidly as a fresh surge of pain rolled over him from his throbbing wings. He dropped his head forwards briefly, hands clutching at the perfect grass and gritting his teeth until it passed. Then he forced his head up and looked over his shoulder.

A few metres down the grassy slope, Aziraphale was walking out towards another angel, this one wearing the silver armour of a guard. Much of Crowley’s view was blocked by Aziraphale’s huge white wings, which he’d spread behind him. It took Crowley a few seconds to realise that the angel was deliberately hiding him from the guard’s view. Crowley looked down at his own wings, black as night and spread out on the grass behind him, bloodied and, he felt sure, broken in places. He struggled to his feet.

At the bottom of the hill, he could hear Aziraphale talking to the guard, and he saw the blade of the flaming sword hiding behind Aziraphale’s back. Crowley noticed with surprise that Aziraphale did indeed have a smattering of black feathers mixed in with the white, a section of the secondaries tucked right up next to his body. Crowley had never noticed them before.

Then Aziraphale ducked and the dark feathers flashed out of view under the lighter ones. The guard had drawn his own sword, and the sound of clanging metal was soon filling the little valley. 

Crowley limped closer, fighting against the waves of nausea rolling over him, keeping his eyes locked on Aziraphale to keep his balance.

He was still quite a way away when Aziraphale cried out and fell back. Crowley hobbled closer as fast as he could, but darkness was edging around his vision again and he knew that blacking out now would do nobody any good. 

But Aziraphale was back up again a moment later, jumping to the side to avoid one of the guard’s swings, raising his stolen sword to block the next. The guard lunged forward again, and this time, as Aziraphale lurched to the side, the guard kicked one of his legs out from under him.

Aziraphale hit the ground hard, sword flying from his grip, and the other angel pounced on him immediately, his own sword raised. 

Crowley was still five metres away. He shouted—what, he didn’t remember, but it caught the guard by surprise. In that fraction of a second, Aziraphale fumbled in the grass by his side for his weapon, hand closing around the hilt.

The guard swung his attention back around to the angel sprawled at his feet, bringing his sword down, but Aziraphale was faster, plunging the flaming sword upwards to spear the guard straight through the chest.

Crowley staggered closer, feeling himself weaving back and forth as his dizziness increased.

Aziraphale tipped the body of the guard to the side and stood shakily, watching Crowley close the distance between them. Aziraphale met the demon’s eyes for a second, and then he reached over and pulled the sword from the guard’s chest. He sniffed and swallowed before limping towards Crowley—that was when he saw the bright red slash along the angel’s thigh, already bleeding into the fabric of his tan trousers.

“You should heal that,” Crowley rasped as soon as Aziraphale reached him, swaying gently in place and shaking.

“I’m fine,” Aziraphale said. His tone was not reassuring.

Crowley opened his mouth to protest when there was a sudden blare of trumpets in the distance.

Aziraphale’s head snapped around, and he reached blindly for Crowley’s shoulder. “Someone’s sounded the alarm. We need to get out of here, _now.”_

Aziraphale threw his wing around Crowley’s shoulder and the two of them limped hurriedly up the incline and away from the road. Despite the angel’s claims that he was all right, Crowley could hear his sharp intakes of breath on every other step. 

At the top of the rise, Aziraphale started forward only to collide bodily with another angel. Aziraphale fell backwards several paces, dragging Crowley with him.

For a moment the angel—the two angels, in fact—just stared at them, bemused. Then their eyes fixed on Crowley’s wings, peeking out from behind Aziraphale’s white feathers.

The angel Aziraphale had collided with—currently in the form of a young man—narrowed his eyes. His hand went to the hilt of his sword.

Aziraphale was up the hill in an instant, pushing Crowley back down by the shoulder when he tried to rise to help him. 

Aziraphale ran the angel straight through before he'd even had a chance to draw his sword. The second angel—a dark-skinned woman with long dark hair—rushed to her companion’s aid, grabbing him by the shoulders as he fell, wings fanning to either side.

Aziraphale ran her through too.

Crowley, still working to gain his feet, could only stare in disbelief. Aziraphale stood with his back to the demon, wings half-spread behind him. The dark patch of feathers was larger than Crowley remembered from a moment ago, reaching almost halfway across his secondaries now. And as the dark-skinned angel slid onto the ground beside her companion, Crowley watched as, before his very eyes, Aziraphale’s marginal coverts—the tiny feathers covering the leading edges of his wings—greyed and turned jet black.

 

~~***~~

 

As Crowley stared, stunned, several things became immediately clear to him.

Aziraphale turned around, breathing heavily. He looked down at the flaming sword in his hand for a second and then turned back to Crowley. He crossed the short distance and helped the demon the rest of the way to his feet.

“Come on, we’re almost there,” Aziraphale said, swinging his wing around Crowley again. 

He didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Zira—” Crowley began as the angel pulled him down into a short valley and up another hill, glancing over his shoulder all the while.

“Hang on,” Aziraphale interrupted as they reached the top of the rise, which was lined with a row of silver-barked trees. Every leaf looked carefully moulded, perfect and emerald green.

“Your wings—” Crowley tried again, urgently.

Aziraphale shushed him, tugging Crowley into the shade of one of the trees. He pointed in front of them, where a long, relatively flat meadow stretched out. The grass was longer here, but just as impossibly perfect.

“See that wall?” Aziraphale asked, indicating a low stone wall that ran along the far side of the meadow.

“Yeah,” Crowley said, giving it a quick glance. “Azira—”

“That’s the edge of Heaven,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley did a surprised double take. “All we need to do is get over it and we can get back to Earth.”

Crowley looked at the low stone wall. It wasn’t far. 

It could wait. 

He turned back to the angel, grabbing him by the arm urgently. “Listen, Zira, you’re going to—”

A hand closed around Crowley’s throat, crushing his last word, another tightening vicelike around his arm. Before he knew what was happening, Aziraphale was being yanked away from him, and he felt himself being thrown onto the ground.

Crowley’s wings screamed as he landed on top of them, crumpling the injured joints even further. 

His vision blazed to white as sounds of fighting erupted nearby and he heard Aziraphale shouting something.

Crowley was rolled roughly onto his side, his wings yanked out from underneath him by strong hands as a blade bit into the back of his neck. His face was pressed right up against the ground now, the impossible grass tickling his nose. Crowley took a sharp, gasping breath, and abruptly recognised the scent lying heavy around him. 

Memories forged millennia ago swamped the demon in an instant. For a moment, Crowley was curled up in the grass, but it was a different stretch of grass, and everything was still fresh and new. The scent of the fragile green blades had been the last comforting sensation Crowley had experienced before inching towards the edge of Heaven and peering uncertainly over the edge. There hadn’t been a wall then, just a line where divinity stopped and the unknown began.

A burst of pain exploded along Crowley’s ribs as someone delivered a hard kick to his abdomen. The demon gasped as all the air left his lungs and he tried to curl up defensively around himself, vision flaring to white again. 

For a moment he was both here and _there_ , with the sounds of Lucifer and Michael exchanging blows ringing through the rushing in his ears. He felt his feet teetering on the edge, felt himself poised on the brink of following the other soon-to-be demons to their new home.

Back under the silver-barked trees, Crowley’s ruined wings trailed haphazardly over his aching body, and the next kick contacted squarely with the leading edge of his left wing. There was a frighteningly loud  _crack_ , and Crowley felt himself pitch over the edge of Heaven as white-hot pain burst along every nerve in his body.

 

~~***~~

 

“Crowley! _Crowley!”_

The demon registered the word, urgent and very close, and felt his shoulder being jostled.

He half-opened his eyes, but couldn’t understand anything he was seeing. A green sky wheeled above him, flashing with silver stars. Gravity was rushing through him like water through a drain. He would hit the ground soon.

He felt himself change orientation—now up was above him, and his legs were dangling in the air. There were pressures around his shoulders and under his knees, and something warm was pressed against his left side.

“Stay with me, Crowley, we’re almost there.”

A blast of wind skidded across Crowley’s face and ruffled through his ruined feathers. His wings, which he sensed were bundled very close to him, burned, and the left one seemed to have lost all feeling entirely. 

Then abruptly he was on the ground again, with a face full of grass. He must have reached the bottom.

Crowley breathed in heavily, and felt the world abruptly slot into place around him.

He took in a hitching gasp of air.

He was lying on his side in the meadow. His head was tilted back and he could just see the stone wall, not far away at all. There were sounds of fighting from over his shoulder, and Crowley twisted his head around just in time to see Aziraphale stab an angel in the shoulder, fiery white sword burning in his hand. Aziraphale’s wings were almost all black now, each feather a deep, gleaming ebony save for the startlingly white primaries on his wingtips. Crowley turned his head back around and tried rolling onto his stomach.

His wings were on fire, his left one searing as though it had been branded. He forced himself to his hands and knees. There was a ringing in his ears; he shook his head to try to dislodge it.

A gurgling cry came from behind him, and then Aziraphale was suddenly at his side, helping him up. 

The quick change in elevation almost knocked him out again, and it was enough to make him sway dangerously and see stars, but Aziraphale kept pushing him forward. The boundary wall grew larger in Crowley’s muddled vision, quaint and built of light grey stone, only three feet high. 

They were going to make it.

He hadn't even finished the thought when a figure stepped into their path, all gleaming white wings and open hands.

Aziraphale rocked to a halt a few feet away. Crowley gasped for breath and leaned heavily against him, struggling to remain upright. His legs seemed to have betrayed him again.

“Aziraphale,” the angel said calmly. He appeared to be unarmed. 

Aziraphale swallowed, the sound strangely loud to Crowley’s ears. “Malachi,” he responded levelly. 

The angel Malachi took a half step closer, dropping his hands. Aziraphale took a half step back in response, pulling Crowley along with him. Aziraphale’s wing grabbed the demon securely by the shoulder, keeping him in place.

“Aziraphale,” Malachi repeated. “Old friend. What are you doing?” His gaze slid to Crowley and back to the angel.

Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably, adjusting his grip on his stolen sword. Crowley shook with a fresh wave of pain.

“What I must,” Aziraphale said at last. 

“Give up this foolishness,” Malachi stressed, voice persuasive. “Release the demon and we will accept you back into the fold. All will be forgiven.” The angel’s eyes roamed significantly past Aziraphale to the dead angels strewn behind him. Crowley wondered hazily if he’d noticed Aziraphale’s wings, only tipped in white now. 

It was a good deal.

Aziraphale hesitated. Crowley could feel it in his posture, in the way his wing tightened reflexively around the demon’s shoulder and the catch in his breath.

Crowley felt, rather than saw, Aziraphale look over at him, slumped against the angel’s side, rasping in another shaky breath. He wished he could have summoned enough strength to speak, to state his case. To appear a little less pathetic.

Aziraphale turned back to Malachi. “No thanks,” he said, and his voice was surprisingly strong.

“But don’t you see?” Malachi persisted, undeterred. “It’s just another part of the demon’s spell—another trick to keep you under his control. He’s corrupted you, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale stiffened; Crowley felt him straighten up, imagined the steel coming into his eyes. “What’s this obsession you've all got about spells? What makes you think _he_ corrupted _me?_  Just look at him—do you _really_ think he’s got any magical sway over me now?”

Malachi looked uncertain, but held his ground nonetheless. “But the demon—”

“His name,” Aziraphale interrupted, voice a low growl, “is _Crowley,_ and he has never laid a single demonic finger on me. Everything I did—everything I’ve _done_ —I did of my own free will. It’s something I learned from the humans, you know. They took the apple; they broke the rules—they chose free will. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Malachi took a step forward, hands up again, pleading. “Stop this foolishness, old friend—”

“About that,” Aziraphale said, stepping closer. “Do you see this demon? He’s more of a friend to me than you or any angel ever was.”

Aziraphale thrust his hand forward, and Malachi gasped as the angel’s sword ran him straight through.

Malachi toppled away to the side, the sword remaining firmly lodged in his chest.

“Come on,” Aziraphale said, dragging Crowley the last remaining feet to the low stone wall. The angel pushed Crowley onto the top rather unceremoniously, and the demon hesitated there on the brink. Divinity lay to his right, nothingness to his left. It was a familiar sensation.

Aziraphale reached for the wall.

In that instant, Crowley saw the angel’s wings half-spread behind him, and watched the gorgeous long white primaries darken to black. The last wisp of white vanished.

In a surge of adrenaline, Crowley reached out and grabbed Aziraphale roughly by the arm, hauling him up and over the wall, sending him tumbling away from divinity.

The demon threw himself off the wall after him just as both of Aziraphale’s wings burst into flame.


	4. Skydive

Though falling and Falling are two completely different things, they look very similar. Crowley was currently doing the former, Aziraphale the latter.

Gravity does have a little something to do with it, but transitioning from the divine to the mortal world is as much of a sideways shift as a vertical displacement. Gravity brings the transitioning angel closer to the mortal world physically, and as that happens a simultaneous shift to the physical plane occurs.

Transitioning through planes is a lot like riding an exponential function: you leave where you are very quickly, have a nice jaunt through no man’s land, and then all of a sudden end up where you want to be.

Proper use of wings is therefore important mostly for steering and to slow the descent if the angel wants more time to properly aim for their chosen destination.

Crowley was currently banking on his ability to hit a very small bullseye with a defective bow and arrow, which wasn’t the best situation to be in.

For one thing, the pain was unbearable.

Flying on damaged wings would have been torture enough; flying with one wing _broken_ was like trying to run a marathon on a broken femur.

With every brush of wind through Crowley’s feathers, fresh waves of agony screamed through bruised and broken bones, whiting out his vision completely. In his mind’s eye, he was Falling for a second time, and there were sun-drenched ebony feathers everywhere and the sounds of metal on metal and shouting, and it felt like Crowley’s soul was being ripped into pieces.

And then there was the _scream_ —wordless and agonising, piercing through the shock of Crowley’s blinding pain. It was easily the most horrible sound the demon had ever had the misfortune to hear. At first, Crowley thought shakily that it must be a memory from that other Fall, so very long ago. As it dragged on, Crowley decided it must be him in the present, because his wings felt like they were going to tear themselves from his back.

And then he realised it was neither.

Falling below Crowley, caught in an erratic spiral and flapping wildly _,_ was Aziraphale. Every inch of the angel’s formerly snow-white feathers were aflame, the divine fire breaking the feathers into shimmering dust while leaving the angel’s body untouched.

Spirals of black, iridescent soot swept past Crowley, rushing past his cheeks and streaking through what remained of his own wings as he fell after Aziraphale like a stone.

The Falling angel was dropping further away from Crowley every second as his wings dissolved in flame, rushing closer and closer to the mortal plane. If Crowley wasn’t with Aziraphale when he hit the ground, the demon suddenly realised, he might never be able to find him.

Crowley knew that the only way to get closer was to enter a dive, but that required folding his searing, broken wings, currently dragging after him like dead weights. It would have been hard enough to wrench his wings close to his body at this speed had they been unhurt. In his present condition…

But Aziraphale was dropping further and further away, wings just flashes of light now, scream mercifully silenced.

Crowley swallowed and, before he could think better of it, before he could consult his pain-overcharged body, cranked in his right wing.

A surge of fresh pain hit the demon like a tidal wave as he went into a dizzying, uncontrolled spiral, feeling himself black out as he dove head-first towards the ground. 

He came to a moment later, gasping and choking as air slammed into him. They were entering the atmosphere.

Crowley looked around wildly, squinting against the rush of air streaming past his eyes. He couldn’t see Aziraphale anywhere.

Crowley felt panic come over him, gripping icy claws into his chest. He threw his head back and forth but saw nothing except for grey, almost blue swirls of mist. Below him, a darkened Earth had started to come into view, stretching from horizon to horizon. The ground was covered by black wisps of cloud, though judging by the swaths of city lights, they appeared to be somewhere over France.

Then Crowley heard him, catching just a snatch of what might have been a scream, might have been a shout.

Crowley twisted his head around again, and this time glanced over his shoulder, where both of his wings had returned to streaking behind him.

There, some ways above him, was a flash of fire. 

Crowley looked back down—France was rushing closer—and then, before he could think about it, re-expanded his right wing.

The pain wasn’t as bad this time, or maybe he was expecting it; he felt himself slow a little, felt fresh spears jam along the leading edge of his wing as he tried to flatten it. Air surged between his remaining primaries, tearing at the ruined roots where the other feathers should have been. He went back into an uncontrolled oblique spiral.

The demon threw his head back, watching as Aziraphale tumbled closer. Crowley positioned himself as near as he could with small, feeble flaps of his battered wing, and a moment later the angel flashed past him.

Crowley lunged for him, wings screaming as he tried to grab Aziraphale’s wrist, his arm, anything—Crowley overshot the Falling angel’s torso but then abruptly collided with something else. The demon latched on with all his strength.

A moment later he was jerked abruptly downward, the change in angle tearing at his wings as he plunged downward after Aziraphale. Crowley registered that his death grip was on the angel’s foot and ankle, and he was now being dragged along behind him, the demon’s vision a blur of burning wings and dark, misty France.

Aziraphale’s wings suddenly opened further, shooting past Crowley’s head in a wave of flames. The fire flared even brighter, gleaming bright white along the bones.

The movement sent them swinging north, France reeling beneath them. The ground suddenly rushed much closer, and Crowley caught a glimpse of a solid dark streak passing beneath them. 

Then they hit the ground.

 

~~***~~

 

Crowley rattled in a huge breath. The first thing he registered was wet. The second was cold.

His head was a jumble of motion sickness and shock, and it took a few seconds for him to start to piece things together.

The demon was on his hands and knees in what appeared to be a bog, Aziraphale’s ankle no longer clutched in his grip. Cold dark mud oozed between his fingers instead, and frigid water soaked through his trousers to puddle around his knees. Icy rain was falling all around him, pelting his back and catching in his hair. It was dark.

Crowley swallowed and forced himself to stagger to his feet. Here on the physical plane, his wings failed to manifest automatically, leaving him with burning shoulder blades but only a ghost of the pain. As long as his wings were hidden in the ethereal plane, they were temporarily distanced from him, which was a massive relief; he could do without the pain for a while.

The dark rain fell in sheets around Crowley, soaking him to the bone within seconds. He glanced around for Aziraphale, but there was no sign of the angel. Crowley did a three-sixty, squinting through the darkness. He didn’t remember letting go, hand still smarting slightly from his death grip on the angel’s ankle, so hopefully Aziraphale would be fairly close.

He started off through the mud, feet sinking into icy puddles, shoes sticking in the mire. Crowley raised a hand to peer through the rain, his injured shoulder aching painfully at the movement. “Aziraphale?” he shouted hoarsely, splashing his way forward. He scanned the bog, all clumps of peat and long grass. “Angel?”

Crowley waited for a few seconds, but heard nothing but the faint whooshes of the rain and his own raspy breathing. He jogged forward as far as he dared, shouting Aziraphale’s name and listening for an answer. Then he turned back and started off at a tangent, towards some shadowy trees. “Zira! Aziraphale, can you hear me?” 

The angel was nowhere to be found.

Crowley swallowed nervously, turning in another circle and starting off in a new direction. He could feel desperation beginning to set in, colouring his worried shouts. “Aziraphale? Dammit, angel, where are you?”

A hazy buzz was starting to settle over Crowley’s mind, and he knew he was in worse shape than he had initially hoped. His shoulder was throbbing insistently and his legs had started trembling again, but he shook it off and forced himself to continue slogging ruthlessly through the mud. He blinked away the icy rainwater dripping into his eyes from where his hair was plastered flat against his head. 

_“Aziraphale?”_ he shouted, voice jumping an octave halfway through. A gust of wind blew a fresh wave of rain into his face.

Then, distantly, he heard it: “Crowley?”

The word was quiet and scratchy, but the demon wouldn’t mistake that voice anywhere.

The call came again, desperate this time, and Crowley pinpointed the direction it was coming from. He started jogging towards its source. “Aziraphale! Hold on, I’m coming!”

The waves of rain parted before him, and suddenly he caught sight of the angel. 

Aziraphale was huddled on the ground, half in and half out of a particularly large puddle. He was halfway to his hands and knees, visibly shaking even from this distance.

Crowley ran forward, dropping to his own knees and grabbing Aziraphale by the shoulders, the angel feeling chilled through his soggy jumper.

“Crow—ley,” Aziraphale rasped urgently as the demon reached him, voice strained and hoarse. The angel’s hands struggled upwards to grasp at Crowley’s arms, and when he lifted his head it looked like it took an enormous effort. He was very pale and shaking violently, and Crowley’s steadying hands on his shoulders didn’t seem to be helping much.

Aziraphale’s bright blue eyes fought to make contact with Crowley’s, found them, and latched on like a drowning man. The angel’s pupils were blown open far further than they had any business being, and the urgency in his eyes was unnerving, shining through the rainy darkness like twin beacons. His mouth struggled to form words. Crowley found himself leaning forward as Aziraphale finally found his voice and wheezed out, “Are you—all right?”

Crowley stared at him in disbelief. “Am _I—?”_ he began, but Aziraphale’s eyes were still boring into his, burning with that frightening, feverish intensity. His hands had tightened on Crowley’s arms, fingers digging painfully into his skin.

Crowley blinked. “Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

Aziraphale let out a huge, shaking breath, his head dropping forward as though he no longer had the strength to keep it up. His hands relaxed their death grip, and one of them patted his arm almost affectionately.

Aziraphale took another breath, the simple motion extenuated by his shaking shoulders.

Then the breath rattled out of the angel and all the fight seemed to leave him at once. His shoulders drooped and he pitched forward, hands falling limply from Crowley’s arms.

Crowley, with his hands still on Aziraphale’s shoulders, caught him before he fell too far, but a spark of panic flared through him at the sudden deterioration. “Angel?” he asked quickly, shifting a hand further over to tap the angel gently on the cheek, water streaming over his hand from the unconscious angel’s hair. “Zira? Aziraphale!”

But the angel didn’t answer beyond his shaky rasping breaths, and Crowley just held him in place for a moment, looking up and around. The grassy bog extended in all directions, though the hazy silhouettes of trees were visible fairly close, off to the demon’s left. There was no one else in sight. 

Crowley swallowed and looked back down at Aziraphale, slumped unconscious against his arms, freezing rain dripping down his hung head.

Crowley made a decision and heaved himself to his feet, pulling Aziraphale up with him. The angel was heavier than he’d expected and dead weight, alternatively sagging against Crowley or trying to slide down him back into the mud. 

After a few graceless attempts the demon gave up, gasping as he sank back to the ground, grass crackling beneath him. Crowley’s shoulder was throbbing again, and he could occasionally feel sharp twinges in the ethereal space where his wings should have been. He looked down at Aziraphale, and wondered suddenly what the angel felt in that otherworldly space.

Crowley took a second to catch his breath and pushed the thought from his head. He leaned over to where Aziraphale was half-sitting, half-lying on the mud near him, shaking the shivering angel’s shoulder.

“You’ve got to wake up, Zira,” he said, voice hoarse. “I can’t carry you. You’re too heavy.” Crowley half-laughed to himself, though there was little humour in the situation. “Too many cream cakes.” The laugh turned into a cough, which turned into a series of violent shudders. 

“We've gotta get out of here, angel,” Crowley said once he had got his breath back, glancing up at the slate grey sky above them and squinting through the rain. “Above will be sending people soon—probably already have. We’re wanted fugitives. Heh, fancy that.”

Crowley shivered again, but this time at the thought of what would happen if Heaven caught up with them. He sniffed and turned back to Aziraphale, resting a hand on the angel’s rain-slicked neck. His pulse was strong enough, but Crowley doubted that was where the main problem lay. What had happened to the angel didn’t leave physical scars.

Crowley closed his eyes, listening to the curtains of rain swooshing across the bog. He took a slow breath and looked deep inside himself, searching for even a trace of magic, of his demonic power rekindling after being banished by the sigil-etched restraints. He just needed a little—there had to be _something—_

And there was. Just a small swirl, a coil of demonic magic right down near the bottom of himself, a spark of warmth in the freezing night. 

Crowley called it to him and, eyes still closed, carefully channeled it into Aziraphale.

It only took a second, and Crowley opened his eyes again. Even the small effort left him feeling drained. He shivered in the night, goosebumps springing up along his forearms.

He turned his gaze back to Aziraphale, who looked exactly as he had a moment ago. Crowley shook the angel’s shoulder again, praying to anyone who would listen that the angel would revive. He needed him conscious, even partway would work.

“Zira? Zira! Come on, angel, give me something. Just a little, just enough—”

Aziraphale’s eyebrow twitched.

Crowley stared at him.

Then the angel’s eyebrows drew together, and one of his hands inched up towards his face.

Crowley quickly grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders and hauled him into an upright position.

Aziraphale visibly whitened at the movement, breaths wheezing in and out at a faster rate. His eyes opened halfway, though they were shadowed and unfocussed.

“Hey, are you all right? Zira? Stay with me, angel,” Crowley urged in a voice fraught with worry, holding Aziraphale steady as he swayed back and forth.

Aziraphale’s mouth opened, and a fresh shiver ran through him as his teeth clacked together. The angel seemed to be trying to open his eyes further, but they dropped back down to half-mast in defiance. “Wi—ings,” Aziraphale croaked, voice little more than a whisper.

Crowley swallowed. “Don’t worry about that right now,” he said, forcing himself to his feet and shakily hauling the quivering Aziraphale up after him. “We need to get moving, okay?”

“’S ’kay,” Aziraphale slurred, swaying back and forth unsteadily. Crowley threw an arm around him for support and pointed their feet towards the tree line.

“I’s Crowley,” Aziraphale croaked, apparently more to himself than the demon. Crowley’s mouth thinned in worry but he took a couple shaky steps forward, gauging how fast he could move with Aziraphale stumbling along beside him. It didn’t help that the angel was favouring his right leg, probably due to the long cut still visible there. As a result, the angel was leaning on him quite heavily, pushing the two of them considerably off-course as Crowley’s trembling, fatigued legs struggled to support their combined weight.

Crowley was painfully aware of their role reversal from less than an hour before.

It took forever to reach the trees, Crowley giving Aziraphale encouragement he was pretty sure the angel didn’t hear, Aziraphale shivering and mumbling something incomprehensible every few steps. He seemed to be completely delirious, but at least he was on his feet.

Then the gnarled trees were sweeping branches out over them, and Crowley was struggling to pull Aziraphale through the taller clumps of grass and tangles of roots.

They had reached the trees, but where to now? Crowley’s plan had begun and ended at reaching the treeline, getting out of the rain and that little bit further from what would soon become the bullseye in a giant angelic target. They needed to get out of here—wherever _here_ was—as soon as possible. That had to be the first priority.

Beside him, Aziraphale tripped and Crowley had to lunge to keep him upright, the movement sending a fresh wave of pain spiking through his shoulder. His ethereal wings echoed the sentiment mutely.

The trees prevented most of the rain from reaching them, the water running off the leaves in rivulets every few feet instead. It was also darker here, not quite pitch black but approaching it, the shadows seeming deeper and more menacing than they should have been.

Then there was a sudden thinning of the trees, and before Crowley realised what was happening, the two of them had stumbled out onto a narrow woodland path.

Crowley glanced left and right and arbitrarily chose left, pulling Aziraphale along after him. The angel seemed to be tiring, his mumblings trailing off as he listed more and more heavily against Crowley.

The demon, meanwhile, was trying to cover as much ground as possible while he and Aziraphale were both still upright, moving as quickly down the path as he dared, splashing through puddles that soaked right through his already-waterlogged shoes.

Aziraphale was running out of steam when they ran into the car.

It was parked right in the middle of the road—not that it could be anywhere else, with the trees so close and dense—all gleaming blue paint and tenuous hope.

Crowley practically sprinted up to it, Aziraphale hobbling along beside him, wheezing brokenly. After a moment’s thought, Crowley directed the angel to the edge of the road, helping him drop into a sitting position by one of the trees.

“Wait here for a second,” Crowley instructed breathlessly. Aziraphale gave him what might have been a nod before his head drooped forward all too willingly.

Crowley staggered to the driver’s door and tried the handle. It was—rather surprisingly—unlocked, and he let himself in.

The car was a Vauxhall, and only a couple of years old, though Crowley couldn’t date it very precisely, as his knowledge of cars began with Ford and stopped at the Bentley, which he considered the pinnacle of automotive success.

Crowley felt around in the various cupholders and the sun visor for the keys, and was mildly surprised to find them tucked right above the latter.

He had no idea why someone had left an apparently fairly new car unlocked with the keys in it sitting in the road near a bog in the middle of the night, but Crowley wasn’t about to argue.

He put one foot on the brake, the other on the clutch, jammed the key into the ignition, and turned. The car’s engine coughed and jumped to life with a low purr. Crowley checked the gauges—most of them seemed to be working properly—but only one mattered to him right now. They had a shade under half a tank of petrol.

Had Crowley been able to shed tears, he would have cried with joy—they were in business.

The demon left the engine running and clambered out of the car, limping over to where he’d left Aziraphale under the tree. The angel looked to be just on the verge of blacking out again, eyes mostly closed, breathing laboured. Crowley exhaustedly hauled Aziraphale to his feet and half-dragged him the two metres to the passenger’s door. He leaned the angel against the dark blue frame briefly while pulling the door open, and then half-guided, half-pushed him into the seat.

Aziraphale came to abruptly as he dropped onto the black leather, and his head jerked and bounced upwards to look at Crowley. His hand wavered and reached for the demon. 

Crowley took it and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He moved to let go and close the door, but the angel’s grip tightened. It still wasn’t strong, not like the vice grip he’d had on him back in the bog, but it was enough to get his attention.

“Did I—” Aziraphale rasped, looking somewhere in the vicinity of Crowley’s jawline, and sounding surprisingly like himself, “is this—I Fell, didn’t I?” The angel’s eyes roved upwards and managed to meet Crowley’s. They didn’t seem to have focussed properly, but there was a surprising intensity there nonetheless.

Crowley swallowed and couldn’t bring himself to answer. He tore his eyes away from Aziraphale’s. “You’re going to be fine,” he said hoarsely. “Just fine.”

Before Aziraphale could ask anything else, Crowley carefully disentangled his hand and, making sure the angel was all the way inside the car, shut the door.

He walked around to the driver’s door and got in, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the windscreen. Crowley put the Vauxhall into first gear and the car crept forward with agonising slowness. It was no Bentley, but it’d have to do.

The demon brought it up to second and soon they were making good progress, bumping along the pothole-riddled country road. Crowley flipped the windscreen wipers on and squinted through the dark rain.

After a few minutes he glanced over at Aziraphale in the passenger seat. The angel was slumped against the door, head leaning against the window in a position that didn’t look at all comfortable. He appeared to be out cold.

Crowley switched his attention back to the road, and the most pressing matter at hand. 

Now they had a car, and a half tank of petrol—but where would they go? Where could they possibly go? He, a demon wanted by Hell, and Aziraphale, a Fa—an angel wanted by Heaven. Both wounded, both out of power. It was late, and cold, and raining, and Crowley didn’t even know what country they were in. 

Now that he was sitting down and out of the icy rain, Crowley could feel the last of his adrenaline wearing off as the throbbing in his shoulder grew. On top of that, he was finally growing aware of how incredibly  _tired_ he was. Angels and demons didn’t usually need to sleep, and though Crowley had made a habit of it in recent centuries, he should have been able to go without. The problem was, it was usually his demonic magic that shored up his borrowed body when it needed things like food or rest, but without even an ounce of power left, he could feel the mortal corporation trying to take matters into its own hands.

So he had to get them somewhere safe, somewhere warm and dry where they could get help, somewhere they could recuperate, if only for the night—and he had to get them there before he ran out of either petrol or the strength to stay awake.

Crowley was still trying to force possible destinations through his exhausted head when the path they were on curved and joined up with a larger road. Crowley took a moment to read the small signpost—he’d been on White’s Hill, and this new road was Stock Lane. So at least they were somewhere that spoke English. Given that they’d been over Europe while falling, he guessed they must be in Great Britain somewhere. That was something.

Crowley fought a yawn and looked over at Aziraphale, still slumped motionless against the rain-lashed window.

He looked up and down the road, and chose a direction at random.

Some time later—a third of a tank of petrol left—Crowley finally found a sign directing him to a road he was familiar with, the M4. Between that and a road sign indicating the distances to Marlborough, Newbury, and Reading, he was finally able to guess about where they were—southern England, west of London.

Going back to the capital would doubtlessly be a bad idea—despite the lure of their respective homes, their residences would probably be one of the first places checked by Above. Besides, he wasn’t sure if he could make it to London on a third of a tank of petrol, not with this car.

A thought occurred to Crowley, presenting itself slowly as it trudged through the demon’s tired brain.

There _was_ a place they could go—a place they’d be safe and, hopefully, looked after—a place to hide for a few hours.

Crowley headed west on the M4, heading for Lower Tadfield.


	5. Tadfield

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really appreciate all of your guys' lovely comments, though I doubt most of you will like me half so well in a week's time... *laughs nervously*

The little village was out of the way, hidden by strange junctions, winding roads, and hills, but Crowley had been there before, and on a night just as dark and rainy as this.

The car was wheezing a little by now, and they’d been running on fumes for the last several miles.

But Lower Tadfield was laid out before them now, all neat little English cottages and orderly hedged gardens. Only a handful of lights were on at this time of night, twinkling through the rainy darkness.

Crowley stopped at one of the first little houses, right on the outskirts of the village. He peered out the window at the cottage, comparing it to the one in his memory to make sure he was in the right place. The house was unassuming and largely unadorned except for a small light hanging above the door.

The demon had been second-guessing this decision the whole way there— _would_ they be welcomed? Helped? He’d been growing increasingly less certain, but they had nowhere else to turn.

Crowley glanced over at Aziraphale, who hadn’t so much as shifted for the duration of the trip. He had, however, started shivering partway through, and though Crowley had attempted to turn the radiator on, it appeared to be broken.

Crowley glanced at the dashboard, where the fuel gauge was skirting the red line. The faded green lights by the radio indicated it was quarter past four in the morning.

The demon turned the car off and got out, hobbling around the front of the Vauxhall to collect Aziraphale, aching tremors running through him with every step. The rain had dropped off as he drove and was now only a fine drizzle, but the droplets collecting on his shoulders were just as cold as they'd been earlier. The night appeared to be slightly less dark now, but it was hard to tell if that was due to the coming day or just the passing of the rain.

As he opened the passenger door, Aziraphale all but toppled out at him and Crowley fumbled to catch him and push the angel back into his seat.

“Aziraphale! Zira, come on, angel, are you awake? Damn.” The angel’s shivers were small but chronic, and his cheek was ice cold to the touch. His jumper was still saturated with freezing rainwater, and the demon wondered belatedly if he should have taken it off. Crowley swallowed and glanced over his shoulder at the little cottage. He turned back to Aziraphale, freezing cold and unconscious. There was only one thing for it.

Grabbing the angel around the middle, he pulled him gracelessly out of the car, wrapping Aziraphale’s arm around his shoulders and grabbing onto the soaked front of the angel’s jumper with his other hand. Aziraphale grunted something at the movement, but his head only drooped to the side, bumping into Crowley’s shoulder. His legs trailed haphazardly after them as Crowley, grunting with the strain on his injured shoulder and shaking legs, drew Aziraphale up with him to the door.

The demon struggled to pull Aziraphale up the short step to the threshold, and then paused there, panting. A wave of shivers passed over him as he reached for the door with a shaking hand. He knocked as loudly as he could with the side of his fist while keeping the angel balanced against him.

He stood there for a few seconds, wondering if anyone would even be awake at this hour. Beside him, Aziraphale shivered violently and slumped further down his side. Crowley tried to pull him back upright, but his own arms were shaking now from exhaustion and overexertion, and his fingers were having trouble finding purchase. 

A cold breeze blustered down the lane, kicking up some scattered leaves and sending a fresh wave of rain _swooshing_ over them. A trickle of frigid water rolled down Crowley’s neck, trailing right between his aching shoulder blades. 

He was fighting back another fierce shiver when the door to the little cottage opened to reveal the wiry, tousle-haired frame of Newton Pulsifer.

The light from the room behind him streamed into Crowley’s eyes, forcing him to blink and look away as Newt was rendered into a featureless silhouette.

“Please,” Crowley gasped, painfully aware of the desperation in his voice, of the hopelessness of the entire situation. His words came out all in a rush, tripping over themselves in his nervous haste: “I know you have no reason to help us, but I don’t know where else to go, and if we could just get out of the rain and cold for a couple of hours—I can miracle up some money in a little while, and pay you—and even if you can’t take both of us, please, Aziraphale’s badly hurt, and I—I just don’t—”

Newt’s silhouette raised its hands and stepped forward, and Crowley broke off in a nervous stutter. 

“Calm down, Crowley, of course you’re welcome,” Newt said, voice sounding warm, worried, and a little puzzled. “Anathema and I have been expecting you, but you’re twenty minutes early.”

 

~~***~~

 

Newt helped them in, taking Aziraphale’s other arm and leading the waterlogged angel and demon over the threshold, closing the door on the elements with a resounding click.

The cottage was warm and dry, and before they were more than a metre inside, there was a flurry of footsteps and Anathema arrived, all long dark hair and sensible fleece pyjamas.

“Have you—oh dear.” She stopped short, taking the three of them in. Then she hurried towards an adjacent door, pushing it open to reveal a spare bedroom. Newt and Crowley, with Aziraphale slumped between them, headed for it, Crowley limping and dripping rainwater all over the nice hardwood floor.

“We’ve been expecting you for the last couple of days,” Anathema said as Newt helped Crowley roll Aziraphale onto the bed, “but we weren’t sure of the exact date, only a time. Agnes wasn’t terribly specific. I hope you brought the car back in one piece.”

Crowley took all this in distantly, far less interested with the ravings of a long-dead woman than the state of health of Aziraphale right now. 

Anathema crossed to the bed, leaving Crowley standing a few feet away, quite at a loss as to what to do next. 

“Good Lord, he’s freezing,” Anathema said, pressing her hand on the angel’s cheek. “We need to get this jumper off him, now.” 

Crowley moved to help but Anathema held up a hand and gave Newt a pointed look. For a moment the lanky witchfinder just stared at her, and then a look of understanding washed over his features as Anathema jerked her head meaningfully towards the door. Newt set his expression to one of sympathetic dutifulness as he moved towards Crowley, taking the demon lightly by the arm and guiding him towards the door.

“Hang on, I want to stay,” Crowley protested, grinding to a halt and looking over his shoulder at where Anathema was beginning to strip the angel of his soaking clothes with an almost practised precision. “I—it’s my—I knew I should have taken that bloody jumper off,” he babbled distractedly, unable to keep the note of distress out of his voice. “I thought—it’s my fault—it’s just that—angels don’t get cold—” But Newt was already steering him out of the room, Aziraphale slipping from the demon’s view, Crowley’s stammered ramblings tumbling from his mouth uselessly. 

“It’s not your fault,” Newt said kindly, firmly guiding him towards a sofa in the corner of the sitting room.

“But it—it _is—_ ” And suddenly Crowley realised, more than ever, that it _was_ his fault—he had got himself captured by those angels, and rescuing him was the only reason Aziraphale had burst into Heaven in the first place, the only reason he had killed so many of his own brothers, said those damning things—the only reason his feathers had turned black, one by one—and how had Crowley not stopped him, not recognised the signs, not recognised the symptoms from that fateful day six thousand years ago, the day when God’s favourite and half of Heaven Fell—and from his own…? “I’m the—his feathers—they _burned_ —”

“It’s okay,” Newt said soothingly, all but forcing Crowley into a sitting position on the sofa. “I’m afraid we’ve only got the one spare bed, so you’ll have to camp out here for a while.” 

Crowley wasn’t paying attention; he was trying to rise back to his feet, eyes locked on the half-open door to the spare bedroom. Everything that had happened was _his_ fault, a direct result of _his_ actions—he had a _duty_ , a _responsibility_  to be in that room, to make sure Aziraphale was going to be all right, that he was going to be okay—

“He’ll be fine,” Newt said, reading his thoughts. “Anathema will look after him. She’s surprisingly adept at that sort of thing.”

Crowley tried to stand up again, Newt’s words bouncing off him without leaving a mark.

This time when Newt pushed him back down onto the sofa, he pressed against the demon’s shoulders, causing Crowley to flinch violently and hiss as a bolt of pain lanced through his injured shoulder.

“Oh, Lord above, are you hurt too? What on earth did you two get into?” Despite the incredulous tone, Newt looked honestly concerned, and the hand he rested on Crowley’s shoulder was ginger. “I’ll have Anathema look you over when she’s done with Aziraphale, okay?”

Crowley swallowed, still trying to look around Newt at the ajar bedroom door. The pain in his shoulder had served to bring him out of his guilt spiral, and it was still throbbing viciously. The demon’s head was spinning slightly, and his legs felt like they were weighed down with lead. His breath was still catching on every other inhale and his shoulder blades were tingling with the shadows of pain arcing through his broken wings, but all that was irrelevant. “Don’t need…help,” Crowley croaked. “Demon. I’ll be just fine.”

“Well, you look like hell, Crowley,” Newt said at last, voice losing a bit of its warmth. 

“Heaven, actually,” Crowley mumbled.

“You’re white as a sheet,” Newt continued, unflapped. “You need to go to sleep before you pass out, okay?” 

“Don’t need to sleep,” Crowley protested, but his voice was rasping and lacked its usual confidence.

Newt’s expression softened. “Look, I’ll wake you if Aziraphale gets worse, okay? There’s no point to you just, I don’t know, sitting in there forcing yourself into a vigil or something. It wouldn’t change anything and you’d pass out sooner or later anyway.”

Crowley wanted to ignore him, but there was sense in what the witchfinder said. He became more aware of the headache building behind his eyes, and recognised it as exhaustion. 

“Maybe just for a few hours,” Crowley relented at last. “But wake me if something happens, okay? Anything.”

“Will do,” Newt promised, sounding relieved that Crowley was giving in.

Crowley nodded, but his shoulder was aching more strongly, and now that he’d reconciled himself to sleep he didn’t want to stay awake a moment longer. Newt seemed to get the hint, giving him a gentle pat on his good shoulder before moving away. 

“Try to get some rest.”

Crowley grunted and allowed himself to slide into a horizontal position on the sofa. It was too short for his lanky frame, but he curled his feet up, sluggishly kicking off his soaked shoes and positioning himself so his injured shoulder was facing up. There was a pillow propped up near the edge of the sofa, and Crowley grabbed it gratefully, stuffing it under his head. He wrapped one arm around it and let his head drop against its soft surface, letting out a long shaky breath. 

He could see the half-open door across the room, where Anathema would be making sure Aziraphale was well looked-after. 

They’d made it somewhere safe, somewhere warm and dry. He’d done that much. They’d be okay until morning.

Exhaling mightily, Crowley finally stopped fighting the waves of exhaustion rolling over him and let his eyes slide shut. The tension in his muscles slowly relaxed, and he was out in a moment.

 

~~***~~

 

When Crowley next came to, he was aware of being very comfortable. He cracked his eyes open, registering strong bands of morning sunlight streaming through the windows and falling across the hardwood floor. The demon swallowed, feeling surprised at how refreshed he felt. He pushed himself slowly into a sitting position, stretching cramped limbs.

The first thing he noticed were the two blankets sliding off him that someone had charitably covered him with. The second thing was that his left shoulder was carefully bound in white gauze. The wrapping hindered his arm movement, but he sensed that it was doing more good than harm. His shoulder still throbbed, but the ache was duller now, and more removed. He felt rested and well.

As he stood up, stretching like a cat after a long nap, he heard quiet voices from somewhere nearby. The demon’s eyes drifted to the door to the spare room, which was now closed. He was halfway to it, determined to see how Aziraphale was doing, when Newt walked out of what looked like the kitchen.

“Crowley! You’re looking better,” Newt said, sounding cheered. “How’s the shoulder?”

Crowley shrugged as he reluctantly came to a halt. “Not bad.”

“Good, good,” Newt said.

Crowley moved towards the spare bedroom. “How’s Aziraphale?” he asked, reaching for the knob.

Newt slid himself between Crowley and the door with uncanny speed. “Heh, about that—”

Crowley’s eyes narrowed, disguising the bolt of fear that had just run through him as anger. “You said you’d wake me—”

“You needed the sleep,” Newt evaded easily. “Besides, I mean, he’s not necessarily _worse—_ ”

Crowley shouldered past him, pushing the door open. Newt trailed after him uncertainly.

On the bed, Aziraphale was buried under a small mountain of blankets, many of them hand-stitched quilts or afghans. Crowley circled around to the angel’s head, reaching out to feel his cheek with the back of his hand. Aziraphale was flush with warmth, though looked like he might be shivering a little.

“This happened overnight?” Crowley asked incredulously. Beneath the blush of red on the angel’s cheeks, he looked frighteningly pale.

Newt gave him a strange look. “Two days. You slept through all of yesterday.”

Crowley spun on him, but there was no hint of deceit on Newt’s face or in his voice.

“He’s been running a fever for the last fifteen hours or so,” Newt said as Crowley turned his gaze back to Aziraphale. “He was delirious for a while—kept going on about wings and things burning. Wanted to see you.”

Crowley gave Newt a look that would have withered most mortals.

“Hey, don’t blame me. It was Anathema’s idea to leave you sleeping. Anyway, I doubt he would have recognised you. He was pretty out of it. Anathema thinks he’s caught the flu, wants to take him to hospital in Cirencester if he doesn’t get better soon.”

_The flu,_ Crowley thought. _Influenza._ He looked down at the angel. “But that’s a human illness,” he murmured to himself.

“What was that?” Newt asked, but Crowley ignored him. Keeping his hand on the angel’s cheek, he closed his eyes and felt for his power.

It had increased drastically over his day-long nap, and coiled around inside of him now, sustaining his corporation and slowly healing his wounds, a glowing liquid warmth. Crowley drew it from himself like water from a well and funneled it into Aziraphale.

Crowley breathed deeply once, twice, and then abruptly shook as he felt himself run dry. 

He took a long shaky breath, seeing stars. His shoulder burst into fresh pain, and the ethereal space where his wings should have been burned. His legs shook and abruptly gave out as a wave of nausea slammed into him.

Newt grabbed him before he hit the floor, hauling the demon back to his feet and holding him there.

Crowley felt the temperature abruptly drop by five degrees as the world spun dizzyingly, his arms breaking out in goosebumps as a shiver ran through him.

“Whoa, whoa,” Newt said, looking perplexed and horrified at Crowley’s sudden deterioration. “Steady on.”

Crowley swallowed, trying to get a grasp on the pull of gravity. He managed to sway his centre of mass over his feet, which held the dizziness at bay. His breaths were rasping again, scratchy in his throat.

“Yeah, you’re sitting down,” Newt said abruptly, half-guiding, half-pushing the demon out of the spare room. Crowley thought he was going to insist he take another nap, but this time he was steered into the kitchen and plopped down squarely into a chair at the table.

Anathema, who was standing near the cooker reading a book, looked up in surprise as Newt deposited the demon at the table. She closed the book with a snap, leaving it by the cooker to come and lay a hand on Crowley’s forehead. 

“What happened?” she demanded, looking between the demon and her husband.

Newt raised his hands in innocence. “I don’t know—he was fine a moment ago—”

“Zira should be better now,” Crowley rasped, trying to ignore the throbbing in his shoulder.

“What do you—” Newt began, but Anathema moved past him and out of the kitchen.

“Demon, remember?” Crowley pointed out wearily, trying to force the rasp from his voice. “Comes with all sorts of nice perks.”

A moment later Anathema swept back into the room. “His fever’s broken,” she announced. “He’s sleeping soundly.”

Crowley let out a sigh of relief and resisted the temptation to drop his head into his arms on the table and black out again. His head felt like there was a carousel in it.

“But as for you,” Anathema said, sweeping over to Crowley and giving him a once-over, “you need more rest.”

Crowley, for once, was prone to agree. Before he could say anything, though, Anathema had whisked a pot off the cooker, poured its contents into a bowl, and thrust the bowl under his nose.

“But eat this first. It’ll warm you up.”

Crowley looked down at the bowl, filled with what looked to be chicken soup. It smelled absolutely delicious.

Anathema slid a spoon in his direction. “Sorry if it’s a bit stale, it’s been simmering out here for ages. It was for Aziraphale when he woke up, but I’ll put another one on for him.”

Crowley couldn’t argue with that, and thankfully dipped the spoon into the broth. The first few gulps were warm and delicious, soothing his hoarse throat. Halfway through, Anathema had to tell him to slow down if he wanted to keep it down. 

Between the soup and the sitting, the dizziness in his head abated, and though Crowley still felt chilled, he was no longer shivering. When he had finished, he sat back, feeling much better and very tired.

“So the _Nice and Accurate Prophecies_ told you we were coming? I thought that thing stopped at the end of the world,” Crowley said, looking between the witch and the witchfinder.

“The _Further Nice and Accurate Prophecies_ , actually,” Anathema said, stirring the second pot of soup. “She wrote a second one, posted it to us just after the Apocalypse.”

“Say anything interesting?”

Anathema grinned wryly and shot a glance at Newt. “I think _lots_ , but Newt here won’t let me look at more than a couple of pages a day. We almost burned it.”

“You’d never set that thing down if I let you,” Newt protested. 

Anathema’s eyes twinkled and she leaned towards Crowley to whisper conspiratorially, “He’s probably right.”

“Anyway, we found a mention of some visitors, right near the beginning,” Newt said. “Anathema figured out the time and the week, and I realised it was talking about you two.”

“Say anything else about us?” Crowley asked hopefully.

“Not unless you’re familiar with any ‘fern of nightt’ or ‘knavish Cathar manne’; those are the next couple of verses. But Agnes was never any good at getting things in the right order anyway. She did put right at the beginning the part about us leaving Anathema’s car in the middle of nowhere, though.”

Crowley looked up in surprise. “That was your car? The Vauxhall?”

“Newt had to practically drag me away from it,” Anathema admitted. “Just because Agnes says to leave your ‘blue Thames-chariot with the metalle bits in it at the mount of blanc beside the bog of River Kennett’ on such-and-such a date doesn’t mean I want to do it. I just bought that car last year.”

“Well, it sure came in handy,” Crowley said, remembering how Aziraphale had been on the verge on passing out again when they’d stumbled upon the unlocked vehicle.

“Don’t see why we couldn’t have just waited by the car,” Anathema grumbled, casting a glance at her husband.

“Hey, she’s your dead relative,” Newt protested.

A thought that had been mulling around in the back of Crowley’s head for a while came back to the forefront. “Say, does Adam still live here?”

“In Tadfield? Sure thing,” Newt said. “Same house and everything. Mind you, he's grown up a little.”

“He’s interested in _girls_ now,” Anathema whispered to Crowley in a scandalous tone, raising her eyebrows meaningfully. 

“He is turning into a man,” Newt asserted good-naturedly.

It was about then that a faint sound came from the direction of the living room, and everyone turned to see Aziraphale swaying in the doorway.

Newt jumped out of his chair, offering the angel a steadying arm. Aziraphale shook his head but gratefully dropped into the chair Newt had just vacated.

“You doing okay, angel?” Crowley ventured. Aziraphale looked far better than he had just minutes ago—the red flush was gone from his cheeks, and though he still looked a little pale, he’d stopped shaking.

“Can’t complain,” Aziraphale said, sounding remarkably cheerful. “Oh dear, though, I’m forgetting my manners. Anathema, Newt.” Aziraphale nodded gravely in their directions. “I gather you were so kind as to offer us shelter? I cannot thank you enough.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Anathema said, waving away his words as she slid a bowl of soup in front of the angel. “We prevented-the-Apocalypsers have got to stick together, right?”

Aziraphale chuckled, though his voice caught and he grimaced. “Quite right.”

Crowley, for his part, was having a hard time tearing his eyes from the angel. He seemed back to normal, and was acting remarkably like himself. He looked tired, sure, but he didn't seem vastly changed from the Aziraphale who had sat around with him debating which historical figures went to Heaven and which to Hell. That seemed like such a long time ago.

Anathema glanced between the two of them and, turning off the cooker, motioned to Newt. “Say, honey, why don’t you come help me see if those hedges in the back garden need another trimming.”

Newt frowned. “Why—?”

She gave him a meaningful look. _“Now.”_

“Ah,” Newt said, and followed her out of the room. A moment later there was the sound of a door closing. 

For a few minutes they sat in silence, Aziraphale devouring the soup with the same energy Crowley had a few minutes earlier.

“You really doing okay?” the demon asked when he was almost done.

Aziraphale shrugged, though now that Anathema and Newt were gone, he looked a lot more tired than he had before, shoulders dipping in what appeared to be a set of borrowed fleece pyjamas. “What about you?”

Crowley mirrored the angel’s shrug, but the movement jerked his shoulder and he grimaced. Before he could hide the expression, Aziraphale noticed, eyes softening in sympathy. Then they softened even further, into regret.

“I’m sorry I can’t finish healing you,” Aziraphale said, voice quiet. 

Crowley shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. You’ll be back to healing before you know it.”

Aziraphale gave him a long look. He put down his spoon. “Crowley—” he began.

“Adam still lives here,” Crowley interrupted, casting his eyes over a knot in the wooden surface of the table in front of him.

Aziraphale blinked. “The Antichrist?”

Crowley nodded, eyes never leaving the whirl. “I want to go see him.”

Aziraphale sounded sceptical. “Is that a good idea?”

The demon shrugged again, trying to minimise the motion as much as he could. “Can’t hurt. I think he might be able to help you.”

Crowley could feel Aziraphale’s eyes burning into him, but kept his gaze firmly on the table. 

“Crowley, my dear, I don’t know if that’s possible,” Aziraphale said softly, kindly.

The demon shook his head sharply, looking up from the table impatiently. “There has to be a way. We just need to find it. We’ll get those wings fixed up in no time.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath. “Crowley—” he began again, and Crowley felt the angel’s eyes follow him as he pushed himself abruptly to his feet and began pacing the kitchen. A wave of dizziness accompanied the sudden movement, but Crowley pushed it away irritably.

“Look, it’s not just something you can wish away,” Aziraphale said from his seat at the table. “It’s not that simple. I _Fell_ —”

Crowley shook his head in denial. “Adam’s the _Antichrist;_ reality does whatever he tells it to—”

“This is hardly a problem with reality,” Aziraphale pointed out. “It’s divine—ethereal.”

“You’re an angel,” Crowley argued. “Surely he can—”

_“Crowley!”_ Aziraphale practically shouted at him, and now he was on his feet too, limping towards the demon and taking him by the shoulders, forcing Crowley to meet his gaze. Crowley’s injured shoulder burned with the pressure of Aziraphale’s hand, but he didn’t flinch. “Please understand me,” Aziraphale stressed. “I’m _not an angel anymore.”_

Crowley swallowed and turned away roughly, tearing himself from Aziraphale’s grip. He had only taken two steps when an irrational surge of anger rose in him and he spun on his heel. “Fine, then!” he snapped at the angel—for he _was_ , he _was_ an angel, to Crowley—“You’re a demon, then! Happy?” 

But Aziraphale was shaking his head. “Not a demon, either, I don’t think.”

Crowley threw his hands up in exasperation. “What does that even _mean?”_

Aziraphale closed on him, and this time Crowley allowed himself to be held in place as Aziraphale looked him squarely in the eyes. He took a deep breath. “I think I’m human. I think I Fell…to _human.”_

Crowley stared at him, speechless. _Influenza_ , he thought. _A human illness_. “But that’s not possible,” he whispered, the words half a croak. “Angels Fall to demons. That’s how it works. I’d know.”

Aziraphale sighed and let him go, appearing suddenly very old, and very tired. “I know,” he said. “I don’t know how it happened.”

“But maybe Adam can still fix you,” Crowley persisted, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Maybe he can still help.”

“Maybe,” Aziraphale said, but he sounded unconvinced.

“Let’s see him today,” Crowley urged. “This afternoon. See what he thinks.”

Aziraphale shrugged in defeat. “Fine. In the meantime, I’m going to go take a nap. Wake me whenever you want to leave.”

Aziraphale headed for the door, making a detour en route to sweep his and Crowley’s soup bowls into the sink. 

As the angel moved away, Crowley realised abruptly that this wasn’t how he wanted to end the conversation, with Aziraphale walking unsteadily away from him, eyes downturned and shoulders slumped in exhaustion and defeat. Not after all the angel had done for him.

“Thank you,” Crowley said quietly as Aziraphale stepped out of the kitchen.

The angel tottered on the brink, and then turned back to face him. 

“For getting me...out of there,” Crowley continued, kept his eyes firmly locked on a row of cabinets, refusing to look anywhere remotely near Aziraphale.

The angel took a moment to respond, and when he did his voice was soft and even. “And thank you for the same.”


	6. The Orchard

Crowley took a nap as well, tracking down Newt and Anathema in the back garden beforehand (where neither was anywhere near the hedges) and asking them to wake him later that afternoon.

It was all too soon that Newt was carefully shaking his uninjured shoulder, telling him it was quarter after three if he wanted to be up and about.

Remarkably, the nap didn’t seem to have helped Crowley at all; his shoulder still ached and he could feel his wings throbbing and burning even from their hidden location in the ethereal plane. He ran a hand through his hair and went to wake Aziraphale.

Some ten minutes later the two of them were making their way very slowly down the street, headed for the house Anathema said Adam lived at, warning them to mind the boy’s parents.

It was a beautiful day out—every day in Lower Tadfield was beautiful and sunny—with the slightest hint of a breeze competing with the warmth of the sun. 

Despite the sunlight beaming down on the two of them, Crowley felt chilled to the bone. Every few feet his ethereal wings sent a shiver of pain through his back, sparking a fresh ache in his shoulder before the whole cycle started over again.

Between the two of them, it took a solid twenty minutes to reach the boy’s house. Aziraphale set the pace, face drawn as he limped along slowly, favouring his injured leg. Every time the angel grimaced or asked for them to stop for a few seconds, Crowley felt the guilt weighing heavier on his own freezing shoulders.

Then, at last, they were outside the house of the Antichrist. It was quaint, but in that regard as nondescript as the adjoining houses. It seemed entirely unremarkable. 

The two continued walking, taking the next corner and making their way around to the back of the house via the edge of the sprawling green meadow behind it. A well-kept orchard lay on the far half of the meadow, the sunlight streaming invitingly through the trees.

Crowley hobbled up to the hedge bordering the back of the lot and casually peered over it. The back garden was empty.

“Well, where’s the bugger got off to?” Crowley muttered to himself, fighting off another round of chills. He turned back to Aziraphale. “Hey, angel—” He stopped short.

Striding up to them with an adorable, floppy-eared dog bounding after him was a golden-haired adolescent. 

When Adam was still a few feet away, he stopped and cocked his head at them. Unruly golden curls in need of a good trim spilled over his forehead. “Well, hello there,” he said, voice not unfriendly. 

Crowley was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how powerless he and Aziraphale were. They were both running on empty, and yet here the very _air_ seemed to shimmer around Adam. The kid practically exuded health, glowing with a palpable halo of energy. Crowley was abruptly reminded that this was _Lucifer’s_ son, and he could end both of them in a millisecond. This whole plan suddenly seemed like a very bad idea.

“You may remember us,” Aziraphale said, stepping forward. “From the Apocalypse-That—”

“Yes,” Adam said, cutting him off. “I remember you. Aziraphale, right? And…Crowley.” The boy’s eyes turned to take each of them in in turn, his intelligent gaze seeming to pierce right through the demon. “You guys want to take a walk? I’ll show you Mr Richards’ orchard. He doesn’t like anyone taking the apples but everyone does anyways.”

Aziraphale nodded graciously, and when Adam turned away, Dog yapping excitedly at his heels, Aziraphale ambled after him. Crowley forced himself into a staggering trot to keep up.

“It’s been a while, guys,” Adam said cheerily, leading them across the grassy meadow. “Hope Above and Below don’t want to take another crack at it. I’m rather busy nowadays. We’re learning geometry in maths, and that stuff’s bloody _barmy_. Even Wensleydale agrees.”

As Adam spoke, Dog ran back to bump into Crowley and Aziraphale’s legs, yapping and sniffing at them excitedly. The canine seemed to favour Crowley more, jumping around the demon’s legs and growling playfully. Crowley focussed on not tripping over it.

“I see you’re human now,” Adam said to Aziraphale, making the jump from small talk to the point at hand so quickly Crowley almost missed it. “I hope you’re liking it; I sure do.” The boy, now walking with his head turned over his shoulder, wrinkled his nose. “Except Mum and Dad keep telling me to do things. Always wanting me to stand up straighter and eat my vegetables and clean my room. I mean, they think it’s for the best, but does a person’s room really need to be clean _all the time?_ Bet you don’t have to do _that_ as an angel.”

“About that,” Crowley said quickly, jogging to catch up, wings burning in their ethereal invisibility.

“Demons probably don’t have to go cleaning their rooms either, I reckon,” Adam continued as though he hadn’t heard. “I ‘spect it’s just humans that have to do that. Seems a bit of a bad deal, dun’t it?”

They were nearing the edge of the orchard now, and Adam was slowing his pace. “Watch out for Mr Richards now,” he warned, ducking his head and making a show of peering among the trees, which were laden with apples just on the brink of turning a rich deep red. “If he comes a-looking, I’ll just say you guys are keeping an eye on me, ‘kay? I ‘spect he’ll listen to you lot, since you look like grown-ups.”

“Listen,” Crowley said, finally catching up as Adam slowed to a stop by one of the trees. Aziraphale had paled significantly during the walk, and was leaning heavily on his left leg. 

“Seems Dog likes you,” Adam said, cocking his head at Crowley. Indeed, the little dog was crouched in front of the demon, head low, tail in the air, growling his most menacing growl. It took Crowley a good ten seconds to realise that this must be the hellhound Below had sent, the one that had somehow evaded detection during the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t. It looked like it had less in common with Hell than a dandelion. 

“We’ve come to ask you something,” Crowley said, trying to get his point across before the boy could ramble onto another tangent. “Aziraphale—” he forced the words out— “He…Fell, and we were wondering if you could heal him, turn him back into an angel. Reinstate him. Whatever.”

Adam gave Crowley a long, level look, and the demon wondered suddenly if he’d stepped over some sort of line. But then Adam turned thoughtfully to Aziraphale, who hadn’t said a word this whole time. He considered.

And then he turned and walked away, leaving the two of them no choice but to follow.

“The apples are almost ripe,” Adam said, indicating a nearby fruit-laden tree. “Some people say they’re best when they’re on the tree, just past green.” The Antichrist reached up to take one, pulling a bright red apple off an overhanging branch. He pondered it for a few seconds. “But then again,” he said thoughtfully, “you can’t eat an apple when it’s still on the tree.”

Adam shrugged and took a bite, grinning at them. “Take one,” he said, motioning at the apples. “Mr Richards dun’t know what to do with them.”

Aziraphale smiled politely and took an apple. He turned to offer it to Crowley, who was shivering in the breeze. The demon shook his head. Ever since Eden, he’d had an aversion to apples.

Adam was walking off between the trees again, running a hand through the leaves. A surge of pain from Crowley’s wings caused him to grimace, and he was suddenly uncomfortably hot, skin prickling. The wave of heat was accompanied by a flare of temper. Was this kid going to evade them all day?

Crowley marched forward, brushing past Aziraphale, who was thoughtfully taking a bite of the apple. 

“Oi!” Crowley growled at Adam, who stopped and turned to him calmly. Some part of Crowley warned him that this was very stupid, but the rest of him was burning and angry and in pain. “Enough with the applesss!” he hissed. “Are you going to heal Aziraphale or not?”

Adam looked at him levelly. “I don’t think so,” he said, and his voice was calm and even.

Crowley felt his temperature increase by five degrees. “And why the hell not?” 

He felt Aziraphale lay a hand on his shoulder, but Crowley shrugged it off angrily.

“I’ve already told you,” Adam said, seemingly unaffected by Crowley’s tone.

Crowley hissed at him, the injustice of it burning at his core. “After what we _did for you?”_ he growled. “We helped stopped the _Apocalypse_ —Aziraphale and I were willing to stand up to _Lucifer_ —”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said from behind him, in a warning tone, but Crowley ploughed on anyway.

“Doesn’t that mean _anything_ to you? Have you no sense of—of—of _loyalty_ , of common _decency_ —”

But Adam was unmoved. If anything, he looked a little sad.

Crowley was running out of steam, the sudden flash of anger ebbing away as quickly as it had come. The temperature dropped ten degrees and abruptly Crowley was shivering again. He felt Aziraphale draw him back; let him.

“We understand,” Aziraphale said to Adam. “We thank you anyway.”

“We’re as good as dead as it is,” Crowley muttered bitterly, shivering. “Above will have tracked us down by the end of the week.”

Aziraphale’s mouth twitched into a sad smile as he started to turn away.

“Hang on,” Adam said. “That I may be able to help with.”

Aziraphale turned back. Crowley just stood there and shivered, utterly miserable. Dog yipped at his feet. Crowley ignored him.

“If it’s Heaven and Hell you’re worried about,” Adam said, “I can get you somewhere safe. They won’t be able to find you.” He thought for a moment. “There’s a village north of here—Midfarthing—my grandad lived there for a while. It’s real nice. Does that work for you?”

Aziraphale’s face broke into a surprised smile. “Absolutely! Thank you.”

Adam shrugged. “It’s a nice place to live. Almost as nice as here.” He glanced at the sky and suddenly seemed to realise how late it was getting. “Blimey, I was supposed to be back ten minutes ago. I’ve got to get going. I hope you two make it all right.”

“We’ll be fine,” Aziraphale assured him as Adam started past him.

Adam paused in front of Crowley, who was trying to rein in his shivers. “I’m really sorry about your wings,” he said, and his voice rang with sincerity. “I hope they get better.”

Crowley gritted his teeth against a fresh wave of pain and nodded tersely. He was feeling quite ill.

Adam gave him a sad smile and turned to go. “Come on, Dog!” he called as he started jogging in the direction of the meadow. “See you guys!” 

Dog yipped and, after a soulful parting glance at Crowley, bounded after his master.

They were still in sight when Aziraphale rounded on Crowley. “What was that about your wings?” he demanded.

Crowley shrugged, not meeting the angel’s eyes.

Aziraphale gave him a look that said he wasn’t buying it, but Crowley only turned and started off in the direction they’d come from.

“Hey!” Aziraphale protested, catching up easily. He grabbed Crowley’s unhurt shoulder and spun him around to face him, grabbing the demon by the upper arms. His eyes searched Crowley’s face.

Crowley stared blankly at Aziraphale’s jumper, freshly laundered care of Anathema. He unsuccessfully tried to hold down a fresh wave of shivers. 

As they passed through him, he felt Aziraphale’s grip on him tighten in worry. Then one hand released him and went to his chin, forcing him to look up. Crowley evaded Aziraphale’s gaze, looking dimly at the orchard behind him. The angel’s hand jumped to his forehead, where it felt like ice.

“Dammit, Crowley,” Aziraphale growled, sounding remarkably angry. “You’d better tell me this is all your shoulder, an infection or something.”

Crowley stared at the ground and shook his head mutely. 

Aziraphale swore again, something like the sixth time in three days. The angel let go of him, walking away a few feet and then turning on his heel to pace in the other direction. He looked agitated, anger written in the set of his face.

Crowley swayed on his feet.

“Is it—” Aziraphale stopped, took two steps towards him, and stopped again. “How bad is it? It’s not all—how much of it is from your wings, do you think?”

Crowley understood what Aziraphale was getting at—if his fever was primarily caused by wounds on his corporation, the situation was easily remedied by some sleep and a bit of magic in the morning. If it was mostly from his wings—well, then he was in trouble.

“About 80/20, maybe?” Crowley mumbled. “Maybe 90/10? In favour of wings.”

Aziraphale stared at him for a long moment and then turned away again, swearing as he limped a few feet further into the orchard. Then he was back again. “You at least healed the break, right? Tell me you healed the break. First thing. Most important thing. Tell me that was the first thing you did.” He sounded almost like he was pleading with Crowley.

The demon swallowed, fighting back a rising churning in his stomach. His wings burned. He shook his head.

Aziraphale swore yet again. He was going to set a record at this rate. _“Dammit_ , Crowley, _why?”_

“You…needed it more,” Crowley mumbled, closing his eyes against a rising wave of nausea. When he opened them a couple of seconds later, Aziraphale was still staring at him, mouth working in disbelief.

Then the angel found his voice, and his face crumpled into an expression of anger. He took a step towards Crowley, raising a hand, and then turned abruptly and paced away, the hand moving to run through his hair haphazardly. 

Crowley was feeling another heat wave roll over him, and wanted to sit down very badly.

“Crowley— _why_ —what— _damn.”_ Aziraphale ground to a halt. “That was stupid, Crowley,” he forced out at last. “Bloody stupid, and you knew it.”

Crowley shrugged, swaying. “Seemed like a good idea…at the time.”

Aziraphale looked at him in disbelief but seemed to come to some conclusion in his mind. “Well, no more healing for you. And not a finger on me, I can get better on my own. No, it’s lots of sleep for you, and the moment you’re at full strength we’re going to fix this, all right? The longer we wait the worse it gets.” 

Aziraphale’s anger returned a second later, jerking him back into a limping stride. _“Dammit,_ Crowley, you know how these things work. It was bad enough with those bloody silver stakes and the missing primaries, and then with the break on top of that—your wings might never heal properly, now that you waited so long!”

Crowley felt himself shrugging again. 

Aziraphale stopped, staring at him. _“What?”_ he shouted. “A _shrug?_ Dammit,  Crowley, these are your _wings_ —you need them! Don’t you want to fly again, you idiot? Don’t you ever want to feel the wind in your feathers? Give a damn!”

Crowley shuddered, focussing on staying upright. He could tell that Aziraphale was very angry with him, but that didn’t seem terribly important right now. “If you’re going to be human,” he heard himself say, “I don’t know why I need wings anyway.”

For a moment the angel just stared at him, mouth gaping, speechless. Then Aziraphale advanced on him, grabbing the demon by the arms again and shaking him. Crowley rocked back and forth, though the movement did help him focus. Aziraphale’s face was very close to his, bright blue eyes lightning bolts. “Don’t you dare start saying things like that,” he thundered. “Not you. Not now. You are not giving this up, got it? Never. Promise me.”

Crowley blinked at the angel, unsure what was being asked of him. His wings were a steady stream of burning now, and his shoulder was throbbing in time to his elevated heartbeat. His face felt flushed with heat, though he guessed he was very pale. 

“Promise,” Aziraphale demanded.

Crowley opened his mouth, tongue like sandpaper. “Sure,” he rasped. 

Aziraphale let out a huge breath and just stood there for a moment, shaking slightly himself. Then he looked back up at Crowley, and the anger seemed to have drained out of him. He appeared to take in the demon’s condition for the first time. 

“Oh, _Crowley,”_ Aziraphale said at length, and wrapped the demon in a tremendous hug.

Crowley shivered, melting into the angel’s warmth. Normally Crowley would have despised such a show of affection, but right now the embrace was very welcome, even if it felt like wrapping an electric blanket around a space heater. He was just glad Aziraphale was done yelling at him.

Then Aziraphale sniffed and pulled away, and Crowley realised with distant surprise that the angel was crying. 

Before he could say anything, Aziraphale had wrapped a careful arm around Crowley’s shoulders and was beginning to lead him out of the orchard.

The demon let out a long, shaking breath, feeling a fresh wave of heat roll over him. Crowley’s eyes tracked feverishly over the earliest apples, which peppered the grass beneath his feet. Fallen apples…

As they crossed the meadow, Crowley felt himself start shivering again, vision swimming in and out.

Then Crowley’s exhausted mind was conjuring up a strange daytime illusion. He was a snake in half of it, tempting the beautiful Eve with an apple, hiding from the dreaded Mr Richards; in another part, Aziraphale was Falling, screaming that terrible scream as his wings burst into ethereal flame, the fire leaping from the angel’s wings to his own; and in a third, Adam was holding out an apple to him, saying that things happened the way they did because of the ineffable plan.

By the time they reached Newt and Anathema’s cottage, Crowley was shaking violently, vision reeling. He sensed that he was very warm, but was drenched in a cold sweat. Aziraphale remained a solid presence by his side the whole way back, despite the angel’s own limp and shortness of breath.

The small part of Crowley that still had a grasp on reality reflected wryly that he and Aziraphale made quite a pair. The rest tried to sort out why the Bentley was careening into the cottage, the Four Horsemen jumping out and all simultaneously brandishing Aziraphale’s flaming sword—the original one, the one he’d given away on a dark and stormy night six thousand years ago. Crowley recalled with detached, nostalgic interest that he had been threatened with that sword once.

It took him several minutes to register that he was now inside the cottage, and Aziraphale’s arm was no longer heavy around his shoulders. Instead, hands were tucking a blanket around him as his head sank into a pillow, and Anathema was demanding what Aziraphale had done to him.

“He was fine just an hour ago—!”

Then he shuddered in time with a burning wave from his wings, and a warm darkness closed around him.


	7. Twenty Minutes

Crowley was close to full strength in six days.

His wings still burned, a constant reminder of the injures he had failed to heal. The fever had largely abated once he’d taken a nice long nap, but Anathema said he was still hovering almost a degree above normal. She’d also declared that his shoulder was doing a fine job of healing, though as far as Crowley was concerned it still hurt like hell and didn’t look any better to him. He’d wanted to heal it himself once he’d got some of his magic back, but Aziraphale insisted that he refrain from using absolutely any of his power until his wings were sorted out.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, still limped around on his uninjured leg, though Anathema’s strict diet of soup, bread, and orange juice seemed to have done him a world of good. He had regained his colour, at least, and was soon as cheerful and helpful as Crowley had ever seen him—too cheerful, in the demon’s opinion.

They hadn’t discussed what had happened in the orchard since Crowley had blacked out on the sofa that afternoon, and Anathema and Newt had taken the hint.

The Pulsifers both left during the day to go to their jobs, something Aziraphale apologised profusely for keeping them from during their initial stay. Anathema always waved away his words, saying that it was no bother at all and she’d had some time off coming to her anyway.

While they were gone, Aziraphale usually sat propped up in one of the chairs in the living room, reading through whatever book he had found on the Pulsifers’ bookcase. It was entirely apparent that Aziraphale had chosen that chair specifically so that he could keep an eye on Crowley when he was sleeping, though neither of them mentioned that either. The angel had originally insisted that Crowley take the spare bed while Aziraphale slept on the sofa, but Crowley had drawn the line of what he would accept of the angel’s coddling at sleeping arrangements. It was bad enough that every time he woke up he found that Aziraphale had tucked blankets around his shoulders. He _was_ a demon, after all.

Crowley’s strength had returned slowly but surely over the last six days, and he was now as close to full strength as he felt he could be with his wings still burning at all hours of the day. Occasionally he felt the left one go completely numb, a sensation often followed by distressing tingles racing up and down his shoulder blade; Crowley deliberately failed to mention this whenever Aziraphale asked him how he was doing, which was about ten times a day. Additionally, Crowley was getting progressively more worried about Above finding them, and he wanted to get his wings healed as soon as he could so they could get out of there.

The village of Midfarthing that Adam had mentioned wasn’t too far, but Crowley knew he’d feel better once he and Aziraphale were safely under the protection of the shield the Antichrist had apparently placed over the village. He’d wanted to go there as soon as he’d woken, thinking they could wait out Above’s manhunt there while they recovered strength and regrouped. It was the most strategic thing to do.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, had insisted that they’d probably need help getting Crowley’s wing back together, especially if the bone splinters near the break had become dislodged. “It’s going to take at least two people to hold it together while you heal it,” Aziraphale had pointed out with his usual sensibleness. “And if it tried to heal in the ethereal plane while it wasn’t set, we might have to break it again to reset it.”

It was usually about there in the conversation that Crowley felt himself grow a little queasy. He could handle most types of mutilation without a problem—Hell did that to a person—but wings were especially sensitive to even the slightest changes in pressure and angle, and Crowley was fiercely aware that his had been burning like they’d been doused in holy water for the past week solid.

And though it might be wise to wait for a little more of Crowley’s magic to rekindle, between the facts that his wings were getting worse every day and Heaven must be close to finding them, time was not on their side. It had to be done now.

So that afternoon—it was a Tuesday—once Anathema and Newt had returned from their jobs, each begging off a couple hours early, they convened in the living room. 

They had chosen that space because it was the largest room in the house and Crowley would be able to stretch out his wings almost all the way before running into the walls. In preparation, Aziraphale had spent the previous evening walking the Pulsifers through the basics of wing anatomy and what was expected of them. Basically they just had to grab Crowley’s wings and hold them steady (or, in the case of the left wing, the pieces together) long enough for the demon to heal them. They would help re-break the bone if it had attempted to heal on its own. Aziraphale had also tried to walk Crowley through his part multiple times, though the demon had insisted repeatedly that, despite the fact that he had neglected to heal his wings, he did, in fact, know _how_ to do it.

“Remember, getting a good grip is key,” Aziraphale reminded Newt for the eighth time as Anathema went around the room closing all the shutters. Crowley paced nervously nearby, feet crinkling on the plastic sheeting Aziraphale had somehow procured to cover the wooden floor. The angel suspected that Crowley’s wings were likely to shed a fair amount of blood and feathers during the process, and given that Aziraphale had been the one in his right mind while they fled Heaven, Crowley was inclined to believe him. For all he knew, half the angels that had attacked them during their escape had been led there by an incriminating trail of blood dripping from his ruined wings.

“He may try to flap or stretch, but that’ll just make things worse,” Aziraphale continued. “So you’ve got to try to keep his wings in place as best you can while he heals them. It should only take a couple of seconds, but we need to make sure the bones are properly aligned. Flight requires extremely precise bone structure.”

“They know the drill,” Crowley snapped, more out of nerves than anything. He just wanted it to be over and done with.

“He really does appreciate it,” Aziraphale whispered to Newt, but not so quietly that Crowley didn’t hear. The demon pointedly ignored him.

“We should be good to go,” Anathema said, double-checking the last of the shutters. “And I’ve got a first-aid kit in the kitchen if we need it.”

Aziraphale nodded at her gravely.

“Are we going to do this thing or just talk about it?” Crowley muttered. Aziraphale shot him a glance that might have been reproving and might have been worried.

“Let’s,” the angel agreed after a nervous moment. 

Anathema and Newt moved to either side of the room, Newt rolling up his sleeves in anticipation.

Crowley remembered sourly how much he despised needing help. He gritted his teeth and walked to the front of the room, fighting off a grimace. Better to just get it over with so he and Aziraphale could leave and never speak of this again.

Speaking of Aziraphale, the angel was standing near the front of the room as well.

“Haven’t you got, like, somewhere to stand?” Crowley asked, a trifle testily. His wings seemed to burn even more just thinking about how much this was about to hurt. 

Aziraphale gave him an indecipherable look. “Right here,” he said.

Crowley shot him a glance, but he seemed perfectly serious. 

“Brace yourself against me,” the angel said, taking him lightly by the shoulders.

“I’ll be fine, thanks,” Crowley said, a bit colder than was absolutely necessary.

Aziraphale was not deterred. “Humour me.”

Crowley made a show of shrugging but reached out anyway to plant his hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders. He widened his stance slightly. “Happy?”

“Quite,” the angel said. “Deep breaths.”

Crowley wanted to ignore him, but he knew this was good advice and Aziraphale was just trying to help. He took several deep breaths, staring somewhere in the vicinity of Aziraphale’s clavicles. 

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Crowley took two more deep breaths, quicker this time, like a sprinter about to start a marathon. 

He braced himself and burst his wings into this dimension.

It hit him like a goods train.

 

~~***~~

 

Crowley was choking on liquid fire. 

It burned his throat as he spluttered into consciousness, trying to spit the wretched stuff out.

Crowley’s cheeks were burning and he registered a moment later that his face was wet, hair plastered to his skin. Right above the stinging in his cheeks lay two warm hands, one on either side, keeping his head supported. His heart was hammering loudly in his chest, straining weakly against his ribs like it was trying to escape. And coming from somewhere in front of him was Aziraphale’s voice, urgent and filled with panicked desperation:

“You’ve got to heal them, Crowley. Can you hear me? Heal your wings. Right now. _Now_ , Crowley. _Dammit,_ stay with me.”

Crowley’s eyes flickered open sightlessly and slid closed again, but he took in what Aziraphale was saying. 

_Wings_.

The demon gasped for breath, feeling traces of the burning liquid still heavy on his tongue. His wings were nothing more than a haze of pain, white and intense. 

He reached inside, feeling numbly for his power. It was there, placid and waiting. He wrapped his mind around it and, after two unsuccessful attempts, directed it into his wings. Immediately the white haze began to recede, and his next breath was a little more stable. He continued threading power into his wings, and was soon able to differentiate between the twin burnings on the main joints and a larger, fresher pain on the left wing. He focussed on that area, feeling himself tremble as the bone knit itself together.

“Hold off, Crowley,” Aziraphale’s voice said from somewhere in front of him after a moment, breaking through his mental cloud. “Don’t overdo it. That’s good.”

Crowley’s magic was running low. He could feel it. And he knew that his wings were more damaged than he could fix with what he had remaining. He was tempted to use it all anyway, but Aziraphale’s voice was loud and authoritative, and Crowley was exhausted and his thoughts were all muddled up. He tapered off the flow and abruptly felt light-headed.

“Good job, my dear,” said Aziraphale’s voice, still urgent. “Now put them away. Tuck them away. Almost there.”

For a moment Crowley was confused, Aziraphale’s words jumbling up in his head before he realised what was wanted of him. He felt his hands tighten around bunches of wool stitching, heard himself swallow very loudly. The demon reached for his wings and swept them back into the ethereal plane. Even the small act depleted his remaining power reserves by half, and he felt a wave of darkness and nausea rush over him.

“No, no, no, stay with me,” Aziraphale said quickly, and Crowley felt his hands move to the demon’s shoulders. “You did it. Come on, keep it together. Talk to me, Crowley, _please.”_ The angel sounded on the verge of tears, hands clamped around Crowley’s shoulders so tight it hurt.

Dark stars danced in Crowley’s vision, but the remaining haze of pain in his wings was receding. He took three deep breaths, and slowly the world clicked into place around him.

He was kneeling on the plastic sheeting spread over the floor, leaning forward against Aziraphale, hands bunched in the angel’s jumper near his shoulders. His cheeks burned, especially the left one, and his heart was fluttering weakly in his chest. As he brought himself together, he noticed again that he was soaking wet—or, at least, his head and shoulders were. His left shoulder was throbbing as usual, but the only pain ebbing through from the ethereal plane was in the form of a few small twinges.

Crowley blinked and forced himself to sit back, groaning a little at the movement as he pulled together the tattered scraps of his remaining strength. He released his death grip on Aziraphale’s jumper, running the back of a hand over his burning and dripping cheek instead.

“Crowley? My dear? Are you okay?” A very pale Aziraphale was looking at him with nothing short of deathly worry, hands still tightly gripping the demon’s shoulders.

“Grand,” Crowley managed, tasting again the sharp burning on his tongue. He forced himself to sit up a little further, stretching back his shoulders. His injured one burned in response but his wings remained present only through ghostly twinges. “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”

Aziraphale made a strangled sound of disbelief, and before Crowley could register what was happening, the angel had pulled him into a crushing hug. Aziraphale was trembling all over, hands bunched tightly in the back of the demon’s jacket. Aziraphale let out a long, shaky breath, and Crowley realised with surprise that the angel was crying.

“It was really touch and go there for a while,” Aziraphale stammered hoarsely into Crowley’s ear.

The demon gave a hollow, nervous laugh. “You can’t get rid of me that easily,” he teased, trying not to panic at how tightly Aziraphale was holding onto him.

When the angel showed no signs of wanting to let go, Crowley patted Aziraphale uncertainly on the back. “See? Indestructible.”

Aziraphale gave a soft laugh and pulled back, wiping self-consciously at his eyes with the ends of his sleeves. “You—you’ve been unconscious for the last twenty minutes,” he confessed.

Crowley’s eyes jumped to Aziraphale in shock. He took the angel in again, suddenly reading his trembling hands and red-rimmed, shadowed eyes for what they were. 

He also registered the weak pattering of his heart in his chest, as though beating were too much work; remembered the desperate way Aziraphale had called out to him; felt the smarting on his shoulders from the death grip the angel had had on him, as though he hadn’t trusted Crowley not to black out if he let go.

The demon swallowed. Unable to meet Aziraphale’s eyes, he dropped his gaze to the floor. Then he frowned. Sitting near the angel were an empty bucket and an open bottle of what looked like vodka.

Crowley put two and two together, hand again going to his stinging, wet cheek. He recognised the sharp taste in his mouth now as alcohol. “Did you—did you slap me and then _throw a bucket of water on me?”_ he asked incredulously.

Aziraphale suddenly looked embarrassed, though at least it helped to wipe the worried, exhausted expression from his face. “Sorry about that. Newt thought it might help.”

Crowley blinked and looked over his shoulder, belatedly remembering that he and Aziraphale weren’t alone. Behind him, strewn over the plastic sheeting, was an impressive scattering of long, gleaming black feathers, along with a generous amount of blood. Anathema and Newt were standing nearby, both staring wordlessly at the mess of feathers. Newt’s hands were hovering in front of him, as though he’d recently been holding something and had forgotten to let go when he was done.

Crowley pushed himself to his feet, registering that even with depleted power he felt better than he had in a week. Aziraphale followed him to his feet, still looking worried.

“Wings,” said Newt numbly. “And magic— _real_ magic.”

Aziraphale patted Crowley on his uninjured shoulder and gave the demon a strained smile. “They were like this the whole time,” the angel whispered hoarsely, wiping away the last of his tears with the back of his hand and sniffling.

Anathema recovered first. “It—it looked like it healed right,” she said, looking at Aziraphale. “Fused together in a straight line, like you said.”

Aziraphale nodded, looking rather relieved as he made a visible effort to pull himself together. He gave Crowley an apologetic glance. “We did have to re-break it, by the way,” the angel said sympathetically. “Probably best you were out for that bit.”

Crowley grimaced at the thought. “Probably,” he agreed, casting another glance around at the sheeting. “Lose enough feathers, did I?”

“I’m afraid so,” Aziraphale said regretfully. “So you got the break fixed? Feeling a little better?”

“Loads,” Crowley said truthfully. He stretched his shoulders again. “Now, when are we leaving?”


	8. Midfarthing

In the end, they stayed the night, Aziraphale helping the Pulsifers clean up their living room and convincing Crowley to pitch in a little as well before the demon dropped back on the sofa for an early turn-in.

In the morning, Anathema volunteered to drive them to Midfarthing in the Vauxhall. Aziraphale agreed, delighted, and Crowley, for not expressing proper gratitude, was regulated to the backseat, where he spent the entire trip staring guardedly through the window in case Above should try anything.

They made the trip without incident, though, and were soon rolling through the village of Midfarthing. It wasn't very large, with little more than a quaint corner shop, grocer's, petrol station, pub, locally owned bank, and picturesque steepled church. Anathema asked where they wanted to be dropped off, and Crowley immediately replied the pub.

“Best place to get information,” the demon said defensively when Aziraphale twisted around in the passenger seat to give him a look with a raised eyebrow.

Anathema pulled over near the little brick- and wood-faced building, Aziraphale thanking her yet again for helping them in their hour of need. Crowley managed a grunt that could have been construed as grateful. Aziraphale climbed out of the car first, giving the demon the opportunity to lean forward and talk to Anathema.

“Say, if you read anything else about us in that book of yours,” he said, “you let me know, okay? I’ll send you a postcard with information as to how you can reach me. Memorise it and then shred it, okay? No, burn it. Much safer.”

“Er, okay,” she said, but Crowley only nodded briskly and climbed out of the car after the angel.

Aziraphale thanked Anathema again and waved as she pulled away from the curb, leaving the two of them standing alone on the side of the road in the unfamiliar village.

Crowley turned and was pushing open the pub's door before she was out of sight. Aziraphale hurried after him. 

The interior of the pub was covered in dark wood and television screens, and there was a distinctly homey feel that gave the impression that it was often frequented by hard-working middle-class men with a strong liking for good-old-fashioned football and beer.

Currently it was deserted, unsurprising as it was about ten o’clock in the morning. Crowley strode unconcernedly past where chairs were set upside down on tables and up to the bar, rapping on its gleaming wooden surface. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone about?”

Aziraphale followed the demon up to the bar and hovered uncertainty at his side. “Crowley,” he began.

Just then there was a series of thumps and a clank, and a moment later a ruddy-faced man strode around the end of the bar. His plaid sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, and there was a pen behind one ear.

“Something I can help you gents with?” he asked, not unpleasantly.

“Yes, in fact,” Crowley said, keeping his voice disarming with practised ease. “We’re new to the area, and are looking for a place to stay for a while. Any suggestions?”

“Donnie runs a B&B over on Station,” the barman said, reaching up to scratch at the ear with the pen behind it. “Otherwise if you head over to Charringford there’s a proper inn.”

“This is a lovely village,” Aziraphale said, inserting himself clumsily into the conversation. “We really would prefer this over, er, Charringford. ”

“Ah, well, I can't say I blame you. Personally, I’ve been here all my life,” the barman said proudly, smoothing over the angel’s rather lackluster conversational skills. “Never could find the heart to leave, you know?”

“Yeah,” agreed Aziraphale. “My friend and I are coming from the city, actually. London. Thought we’d spend some time in the country. Looking for a change in…er, atmosphere.”

“Aye, well, it’s pretty enough out here,” the barman said fondly, wiping something off the bar with a hand. “Life’s so fast in the city, it’s nice to slow down every once in a while. Fresh air, beer, and football. All a man really needs. And tea, of course. God save the Queen.”

“Indeed, indeed,” Aziraphale said. “Well, er, thank you for your advice. I’m sure we’ll be back soon enough, just wanted to pop in and say hello.”

“Sure,” the barman replied amiably. “And sorry, what did you say your names were?”

“Anthony Crowley,” Crowley supplied. “And this is…” he trailed off and looked over at Aziraphale uncertainly.

“A. Ziraphale,” the angel said.

“A.?” the barman asked, raising an eyebrow. “That bad, huh?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “You know how fathers are.”

The barman laughed and extended his hand to the angel. “Don’t I? Name’s Bertrand Marley, but everyone around here calls me Bert.”

Aziraphale shook it, and Crowley followed suit. “So how long you gents thinking about staying?” Bert asked.

“A few weeks, maybe,” Crowley said, at the same time Aziraphale said, “quite a while, I think.” They glanced at each other and looked awkwardly back at Bert.

“Well, you'll figure it out,” the barman said with a grin. “Harper makes a mean cake over at Mendellson’s, but of course the best burgers in twenty kilos are right here.” He chuckled at his self-promotion. “Would recommend.”

“Thanks,” Aziraphale said. “We’ll be, er, dropping in to see if that’s true.”

“Hope you do, hope you do,” Bert said, seeming to notice that there was a pen behind his ear and pulling it out with some bemusement.

“Well, we’ll see you around,” Aziraphale said, with the air of someone who wants to end a conversation but hasn’t had much experience with how to do so.

“Yeah,” the barman said.

Crowley muttered something about places to be and all but dragged Aziraphale out of the pub.

“He seemed very nice,” Aziraphale said cheerfully once they were back out in the sunlight.

“And you seemed very friendly,” Crowley countered.

“Hey, I’m just trying to be nice,” Aziraphale protested. “After all, I am an—” Aziraphale broke off, voice dying in his throat. There was a long pause. “Nevermind,” he said at last.

Crowley stood there awkwardly, staring at the pavement, unsure of what to say. He was forcibly reminded that this whole situation was his fault. “Let’s try to find that B&B,” he muttered at last, and started off in a random direction. The village wasn’t very large; he figured he could find a street called ‘Station’ without too much difficulty.

Aziraphale followed him quietly. Neither said a word the whole walk there.

The bed and breakfast was a lovely, red-bricked two-story cottage with a garden overflowing with chrysanthemums and daffodils. Everything about it made Crowley’s skin crawl. Aziraphale appeared to love it, brightening up for the first time on their walk. For completely unrelated reasons, Crowley decided it wasn’t _entirely_  repellent.

Donnie turned out to be a nickname for Donna, a dark-haired woman in her mid-forties who welcomed them in after hearing that Bert had sent them.

“Such a lovely dear, isn’t he?” she commented as she led them into the parlour. The interior of the house was well-lit and filled with furniture that looked a little too antiquated to be comfortable. A tawny cat blinked lazily at them from a stool near the window and flicked its tail at them. 

“How long are you dears planning on staying?" Donnie asked as she bustled into the room, fussily tweaking the position of a doily on a nearby table. "Must be a last-minute trip if you’ve ended up in Midfarthing. We’re a bit out of the way here.”

“We’re not sure how long we’ll be,” Aziraphale said as Crowley edged away from a frilly lace curtain as though it might bite him. “We’re hoping for more permanent accommodations, actually, but something short-term will do for now.”

“Permanent?” Donnie asked, turning and looking between the two of them meaningfully. “Are you looking to move into the area? ...Together?”

“Something like that,” Aziraphale said uncertainly, shifting on his feet. “We’re from London and are, er, looking for something a bit quieter.”

She gave them a knowing smile. “Well, you've certainly come to the right place, dears. There are good people here, not like in some of those  _other_ villages, if you understand me. There won't be any trouble."

"Er," said Aziraphale, not understanding her at all. Crowley, who was not paying attention, narrowed his eyes at the tawny cat, which had fixed him with a suspicious stare.

"In any case, if you _do_ want something for more than a couple of weeks, I might know a place,” she said, bustling off in the direction of what looked to be the kitchen. “If you dears would wait here for a mo, I’ll put some tea on. You can have a seat if you like. Don’t mind Persephone; she doesn’t bite.” This last was directed at the tawny cat, which was sniffing the air cautiously and still staring at Crowley. The demon, who'd been masking his serpentine eyes with a small, simple obscuring spell, allowed the disguise to drop for a moment, never breaking eye contact with the feline.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, sinking onto one of the straight-backed sofas. Across the room, the tawny cat hissed, shot to its feet, and bolted off its stool. Crowley smirked.

Aziraphale looked at him, clearly expecting him to take a seat as well. Crowley remained standing stubbornly, and only after Aziraphale had motioned to him twice and made a face did he allow himself to perch beside the angel on the hideous floral upholstery.

Donnie returned a moment later, all smiles and sticky perfume. She offered Aziraphale a plate of biscuits. The angel took one politely and Crowley shook his head. If there was one thing demons didn’t do, it was take rose-shaped biscuits from women who looked like the sum of their aspirations in life was to own a dozen cats. Also she had called him ‘dear’ three times already and he didn’t stand for anyone calling him that except Aziraphale (and that was only because he was _extremely_ long-suffering).

“You were saying?” Aziraphale asked, taking a bite of the biscuit.

“Ah, yes,” Donnie said, settling herself on a similarly floral-plastered chair across from them. “Norman Matthisson’s been trying to sell his place for ages. It’s right on the west edge of the village, past where you’d turn to get to Jerry’s. That’s the petrol station. Bit out of the way, but nice enough. Of course, Norman wants a hundred and eighty thousand pounds for it, and I said to him, ‘Norman, it’s not that large, and for one fifty I could live in Cloverfield in a place twice the size, and no one wants to live in the country anymore anyway. It’s all about London and Cardiff.’ But he says that’s what he wants, and he won’t take a pound less. That was a couple of months ago, though, and I’m sure he’d be willing to come down a little just to get the place off his hands. Couldn’t hurt to ask. Otherwise, Charringford’s got a real estate office if you want to look around more.”

“Oh, I think we really want to stay in Midfarthing,” Aziraphale said, eyeing the plate of biscuits again. “Matthisson, you said?”

“That’s right.” She saw where the angel was looking. “Would you like another biscuit, dear?”

Aziraphale coloured but took another one anyway. “Thank you."

Crowley rolled his eyes as the tea kettle beeped softly from the other room and Donnie bustled off into the kitchen.

“Just take the whole plate while you’re at it,” Crowley whispered to the angel, not unkindly.

Aziraphale blushed beet red again, the colour creeping all the way up to the tips of his ears, but he slid another biscuit off the tray with a shy slyness that made the demon give a short laugh. He turned it quickly into a cough as Donnie swept back into the room, this time with a tray balancing three teacups, a ceramic teapot, and two little matching jars of cream and sugar. 

Crowley wasn’t feeling particularly up for tea, but Aziraphale all but shoved a teacup into his hands. It was patterned with blue and pink flowers and kittens. 

Aziraphale and Donnie filled the next ten minutes with mind-bogglingly dull small talk, reminding Crowley all at once of every reason he lived alone. When it came to discussing the weather and local customs, Aziraphale seemed a little uncertain conversationally, but luckily Donnie seemed more than content to just listen to her own voice. Aziraphale snuck another biscuit when she wasn’t looking, making Crowley wonder if they were particularly excellent.

He was staring at the small pile of biscuits, wondering what flavour they were but knowing he could never take one while Aziraphale was sitting _right there_ —not after he'd made such a fuss about Aziraphale eating them _—_ when a lull came over the conversation. He glanced up absently and realised that both of them were looking at him expectantly.

“Sorry, what?” he asked, looking at Aziraphale for any indication of what was going on.

“I think that’s a yes,” Donnie said with a laugh.

Crowley looked between Aziraphale and Donnie and back again. “What—?” he began.

Aziraphale smiled kindly and patted him on his uninjured shoulder. “I was just asking if we were ready to get going.”

Crowley felt his cheeks burning as he muttered some excuse, but both Donnie and Aziraphale seemed to think it was just tremendously funny. 

They stood and shook hands, and Crowley sulked behind them like a moody teenager. 

Luckily Aziraphale seemed to be getting the hang of exits, and soon he was steering the demon out of the cottage and back into the sunshine.

“I thought we’d better get out of there before you feel asleep,” Aziraphale joked, giving Crowley a friendly nudge in the shoulder. This time it was the demon’s injured shoulder, and he winced. “Oh, I’m sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale said quickly, the humour snapping out of his voice in an instant.

“Don’t worry about it,” Crowley said through a grimace as his shoulder started smarting again rather harshly.

For a few moments they walked in silence down the road, passing orderly hedges and low stone walls. “I thought we’d go check out this place of Matthisson’s,” Aziraphale said at last, “and if that doesn’t work, we could go back to Donnie’s temporarily.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Crowley said with a half-shrug of his unhurt shoulder. “I’ll miracle up some money and we’ll kick the bugger out. Easy peasy.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Aziraphale said, but offered no further resistance. Usually the angel would have argued against miracling up money on the basis of the national economy or some such balderdash, but he seemed to have reached the same conclusion Crowley had: they didn’t have much of a choice. They needed to stay in Midfarthing, and if this bloke was selling, then they were buying.

It took them a couple jaunts down winding side roads before the found the address they were looking for: 16 Somerset Lane.

The cottage was built of dark grey stone with a tall sloped roof. Ivy trailed up the sides of the building and wrapped invitingly around the chimney. Though it did appear to be rather small, it was in excellent condition and the roof showed signs of having been recently touched up. The landscaping could be improved; several flowerbeds tucked against the front wall lay unattended and covered in weeds and wildflowers, though it didn’t detract too much from the whole effect.

A silver car was sitting backwards in the drive, the boot open. As the angel and demon approached, a squat man wearing a green coat came through of the cottage doorway carrying a large box. He deposited it in the car boot, the movement swaying the vehicle on it shocks. As he straightened up, his eyes lit upon the two strangers.

“Hello!” Aziraphale said pleasantly, striding up the drive, Crowley on his heels. “Are you Norman Matthisson?”

The man walked around from behind the boot of the car, giving Aziraphale a once-over. “I am indeed. I take it you are…a Mr Aziraphale? Or Crowley?”

Aziraphale started, surprised. “First one. Were you expecting us?”

The man gave a short laugh. “Expecting? You were the ones that paid me, right? Looking for a cottage in the country? I worked all the details out with your associate, Mr…ah…”

Crowley came to a stop right behind Aziraphale. “Adam?” he muttered to the angel under his breath.

“Adam! That was it,” Norman said, snapping his fingers. “Yes. Adam Young. I must say, you gentlemen are most generous. I’ve been trying to get this place off my hands for ages, to tell you the truth, but I was holding out for a buyer like you. Someone who would really appreciate the place. It’s in terrific shape; I restored the cottage myself.”

“Quite right,” Aziraphale said, still sounding a little bemused. “So are you…er, leaving now?” He looked pointedly at the car.

“Oh! Yes. Sorry,” the man said, looking between the car and the house. “I meant to be out of here earlier this morning. You chaps did pay extra for the cottage straight away, and I respect that. I’m just finishing moving out the rest of the essentials. Moving lorry was in here yesterday. It’s amazing how much stuff a person has that they didn’t know they had, right?”

“Yeah,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley thought he detected a trace of wistfulness. It occurred to him that the angel had now lost his priceless book collection not once but twice.

“I’ll be out of here in just a jiffy, though,” Norman continued. “And I’ve got the paperwork inside.”

“No rush,” the angel said. “So where are you headed to, then?”

“Oh, me?” Norman said, smiling broadly. “Thanks to you two, I’ve got myself a plane ticket to India. Always wanted to live there, ever since I visited when I was a boy. And, you know, getting on in years; retirement and all that.”

“Sure, sure,” Aziraphale said, in the tone of someone who isn’t sure at all but wants to seem like they are.

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll just finish up here…” Norman gestured back to the house. “And then she’s all yours.”

“Oh, of course,” Aziraphale said, taking a step back. “Don’t let us keep you.”

“I’ve just a few more boxes…” Norman said, voice trailing off as he hurried back into the cottage.

“That was thoughtful of Adam,” Aziraphale said once he was gone.

Crowley snorted and made a show of shrugging. “I could’ve done it too,” he grumbled. “It’s just money.”

As Norman ran in and out of the little cottage, piling boxes into his car’s boot and back seats, Aziraphale wandered over across the lawn, looking down at the little plots of earth that were meant to be flower gardens. Crowley, for lack of anything else to do, trailed uncertainly after him. The demon busied himself making a show of examining the way the roof connected to the wall, making occasional comments about struts and support systems. Aziraphale appeared to have tuned him out, which was probably not a poor decision.

About ten minutes later Norman was bustling back over to them, bearing a sizable stack of papers. “Here’s the deed right on top,” he said, “and then there’s some legalese you can sign and keep for yourself. I’ve signed all my bits already, and Mr Young said he'd worked everything else out.”

“Thanks,” the angel said, taking the papers.

“Well, I’ll be out of your hair now,” Norman said, looking between the two of them and then back at the cottage. “She _is_ a beauty. Take good care of her for me, would you? Oh, and there’s a draft coming around the window in the kitchen I haven’t got fixed yet. But that’s about it. I’ve talked to the postman; he knows where to forward my things. Keys are inside.” 

Norman extended his hand and Aziraphale shook it.

“Good luck to you,” Norman said. “I’ll send a postcard from New Delhi.”

Aziraphale thanked him again, and then he was in his silver sedan and pulling out of the drive. He paused for a moment in the road, gazing at the house, and then he gave them a last little wave and was gone.

Aziraphale approached the door to the cottage a little hesitantly, Crowley trailing after him.

Inside, the door swung open to reveal a good-sized room. The sunlight shone through the inset windows, revealing dancing dust motes. Rich, dark, exposed beams ran across the ceiling and framed the doorways. A couple of large, bare-shelved bookcases lined the left wall, built so as to surround the fireplace, but apart from that the room was empty. It felt like stepping onto a deserted stage in a theatre before the production had begun, before the set had been put in position or the actors had arrived. It felt hollow.

Aziraphale seemed to be feeling something similar, standing just a few feet inside and looking around the space. Crowley cleared his throat and headed through one of the doorways to the right, and into the next room. This one was a kitchen, a little less empty with cabinets, a cooker, and a refrigerator filling the space. Three sets of keys rested on the counter by the sink. The demon opened a drawer experimentally. It made a slight creaking noise as it rolled towards him, its empty space seeming to take up more room than it should have.

Aziraphale trailed after him into the kitchen, the expression on his face unreadable.

Crowley continued through the house, finding a cramped pantry, a small nook occupied by a clothes washer—apparently included in their “generous” purchase—and a narrow staircase to the upper floor. The walls upstairs were slightly bowed in to allow for the slope of the roof, and the windows were set back into gables, creating ledges a little over a foot wide. There were only three rooms upstairs: a loo and two smallish rooms with closets that looked to be bedrooms. It really was a very small cottage.

Crowley found one of the window ledges and perched on it, watching Aziraphale ghost through the rooms. Finally he returned.

“It could be nice,” Aziraphale ventured at last. “We’ll need some furniture, obviously, and maybe we could get some of our things sent from London—”

Crowley shook his head. “No. We can’t have anything linking us from there to here. It’s too dangerous.”

Aziraphale looked rather put out. “But Adam said—”

“He said this village was safe from Above and Below. But if either of them learned anything during the Apocalypse, they might try to recruit some humans. Hell, even we used Shadwell and the witchfinders. All they need to do is follow the trail to wherever it disappears and send some ordinary humans in to get us. I mean, Adam was shielded from us and we still managed to find Lower Tadfield, remember? Took us a dickens of a while, but we did it.”

“But—what if we did it through a middleman—maybe two middlemen—”

“Too dangerous,” Crowley dismissed. “In fact, I’ll arrange to have a bunch of our stuff sent overseas. Maybe to America. That'll throw them off the trail.”

Aziraphale still looked unhappy at the prospect, but seemed to accept Crowley’s logic.

“Actually,” the demon said. “I should do that now. The sooner the better.” He stood up and headed for the narrow stairs. “I wonder if this place has a phone.”

It didn’t, and Crowley ended up miracling one into existence. He considered miracling up some furniture as well, a table and some chairs, maybe, but Aziraphale followed him down and demanded he stop using his magic until he’d finished fixing his wings. Crowley rolled his eyes at this, but he recognised the validity of the angel’s words. 

So instead he headed back upstairs, perched on the window ledge, and made a number of encoded calls through multiple servers, arranging to have his London flat closed out. He told them to do whatever they wanted with the plants, but to keep them together. They’d been through a lot. He also arranged for some of Aziraphale’s books to be sent to Denver, Colorado, and others to a small town in Vermont. That, Crowley thought smugly to himself, should sufficiently confuse divine interveners as they struggled to find the connection. 

He couldn’t bring himself to put the bookshop itself on the market, though, and eventually just arranged to have the rent paid out of his personal account, which he had dumped something like a billion pounds into when he’d opened it. He also couldn’t bring himself to let anyone else lay a finger on the Bentley. He desperately wanted to arrange to have the car brought discreetly to Midfarthing, but he knew he had to follow his own advice. He instead made a call directing it to be placed under lock and key in a secure storage locker, the type millionaires put their spare sports cars into for nine months of the year.

The sun was nearing the horizon when Aziraphale came back upstairs from wherever he’d been. Crowley finished a call directing the post service to forward his junk mail to Barcelona and hung up.

“You want to swing back around to the pub?” Aziraphale asked. “Get a bite to eat?”

“Well, I don’t know about eating, but I’d be interested in whatever he’s got on tap,” Crowley said, clicking his mobile off. “Probably nothing Ritz-worthy.”

Aziraphale gave him a sad smile.

It turned out the best the pub could do was a hard lager. Among lagers it didn’t even score very high, but it was decent and cheap and there was a lot of it. Aziraphale insisted they order some of Bert’s famous hamburgers, and when Bert himself plopped them down proudly in front of them, they did in fact present an admirable first appearance.

Crowley and Aziraphale chose a small table near the corner of the room, which was slowly filling up with the local crowd. Many of the men were sitting at the bar, laughing or chatting over the cheerful music, but there were a lot of families as well, sitting at the other tables and slapping children’s hands away from the malt vinegar bottles.

Crowley watched them for a while, absently eating a few of his chips. They were just all so… _human_. Everything that mattered to them was so _small_ , so immediate. Their lives were meaningless, short and fleeting. They did a good job of trying to be better, Crowley knew, but that didn’t mean they weren’t dreadfully dull most of the time.

“Are you going to eat that?”

Crowley glanced over his shoulder to where Aziraphale had demolished his hamburger and was eyeing up Crowley’s, which he hadn’t so much as touched. He wasn’t very hungry. He shook his head and shifted the plate closer to the angel before returning his gaze to the humans. 

Their lives were so important to them even when they weren’t important at all, and for some reason this irked Crowley like it never had before. What were their lives, when compared to that of angels, or demons? What was the _point?_

 

~~***~~

 

The next week dragged by. Crowley conjured a couple thousand pounds and gave it to Aziraphale to buy whatever he wanted for the cottage. It was less taxing on him, the angel argued, than miracling each item into existence individually. It would help Crowley heal faster.

The demon couldn’t argue there; his shoulder was throbbing again and it didn’t help that he refused to put his arm in a sling. For him, there wasn’t a lot of fear in the phrase ‘permanent damage.’ His wings, on the other hand, were starting to ache more persistently again, and he knew that was where the real danger lay.

Crowley finished his calls spreading his and Aziraphale’s belongings around North America and parts of mainland Europe and then realised he had absolutely nothing to do. The angel was usually out, going to the little corner grocer's or walking around the village meeting people. Crowley accompanied Aziraphale on one trip to a small used shop, but after five minutes of looking at different types of curtains he was bored out of his skull. As though the type of curtain _mattered_. It was a _curtain_. 

After that, he tried to distance himself from human interaction as best he could. He’d lived around humans for the last six thousand years, he tried to reason, so he shouldn’t have any trouble hiding among them now, but this was…different. Now that Aziraphale was—now that he had—. Crowley never finished the thought.

So he’d taken to walking out near the edge of the village. If he focussed, he could feel the spell Adam had placed over the village, could feel it deep in his gut and through a faint fluttering in his ethereal feathers. The spell extended for approximately a mile past the edge of the village in all directions and then tapered off. This area included little more than fields and a small pond to the northeast, which had a little wooden pier and a couple of fishing poles stashed in a fallen tree. The whole area was so delightfully peaceful it made his skin crawl.

After a week of boredom and smelling Aziraphale burning yet another attempt at food in the oven (he seemed to have acquired a sudden interest in the culinary arts), Crowley was close enough to full power to give fixing his wings a second shake.

He could still feel them throbbing occasionally, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been the first time, which was reassuring. 

Since they didn’t have any of that handy plastic sheeting around and Aziraphale didn’t want to ruin the floor of the cottage, they agreed to do it in the garden behind the cottage under the cover of night. They were far enough off the beaten path that it was highly unlikely that anyone would wander out there in the middle of the night, and a patch of trees behind the cottage provided additional coverage.

So when they were ready, the two stayed up late, playing a card game Aziraphale had learned from the man who ran the corner shop. It wasn’t particularly engaging in Crowley’s opinion, but it seemed to cheer Aziraphale up, so the demon humoured him. Once the secondhand clock on the wall read quarter past one, they decided they had waited long enough.

Crowley and Aziraphale walked back behind the little cottage, the former antsy with anticipation in the mid-summer night. Aziraphale, on the other hand, just looked very tired and kept yawning.

“I’ll keep an eye on your wings,” the angel said, flicking on a torch and shining it experimentally on the grass. “Make sure everything’s healing properly. Sound good?”

“Yep.”

After circling the back garden, familiarising himself with the terrain in the dark, Crowley came back to the edge of the cottage. He faced the stone wall and braced himself against its rough surface. One could never be too safe. “Ready?” Crowley asked.

“Go for it.”

Crowley took a deep breath and pulled his wings across the dimensions. He felt them manifest with something like a familiar weight as he flexed them out, long and straight behind him. Simultaneously, he shivered as a wave of dizzying pain rolled over him. He gritted his teeth but it passed quickly. The main joints of both his wings seared, and he hastily felt around for his power. The demon pulled it upwards and channeled it into his wings.

The burning near the joints immediately started to abate, and it wasn't long before it ceased completely. Crowley smoothed his magic over the aching stretches of skin where his feathers had been ripped out, making sure everything was properly aligned so the missing primaries would grow back in straight. The demon soon ran out of things to patch up, with magic aplenty to spare.

He felt Aziraphale’s hand on his left wing, near the newly mended joint. “Hold still for a moment, my dear."

Crowley waited impatiently, wings itching to be stretched properly for the first time in months. He felt Aziraphale’s hand progress up his wing, prodding occasionally or tugging gently at a feather. Crowley was forcibly reminded of what would happen if Aziraphale pulled too hard, but the angel’s touch was light and careful.

Aziraphale paused for a long time at the area where the break had been, keeping his hand on the leading edge while he asked Crowley to flex and bend his wing. Crowley felt like he was quite capable of healing his own wings, thank you very much, but he’d long since accepted that Aziraphale’s coddling was his way of showing concern. Not that Crowley needed the angel’s concern, of course. It just would have been rather rude to refuse, especially since Aziraphale had stayed up to help him.

So Crowley flexed his wing on command, relishing the way it curled up and expanded smoothly without more than a faint ache. Aziraphale muttered a comment of approval and switched to the other side and repeated the process. When he had worked his way up to Crowley’s right shoulder, he dropped his hands down. “Looking pretty good,” the angel said. “You’re still missing a dreadful amount of feathers, but there’s nothing that won’t grow back.”

“I’ll live, then?” Crowley asked jokingly.

“’Fraid so,” Aziraphale responded, voice appropriately contrite. 

Crowley huffed a laugh and extended his wings again, feeling the warm summer wind rush through his remaining feathers. Aziraphale was right about the injuries still remaining; his wings were unbalanced and he was hyperaware of the areas of missing feathers, but that would be remedied easily enough with his next moult. As he curled his wings back up to his body, a flare of pain shot through his left shoulder. 

He flinched before he could stop himself. “I know what we’re healing next,” he muttered, reaching again for his power. This time he drained it into his corporation, stitching the muscle in his shoulder back together and restructuring the bruised bone there. The rest of him was in pretty decent shape but he ran his power over it just in case, letting it erase all of his aches and bruises. Then he opened his eyes, feeling refreshed and better than he had in weeks. 

Sometime during the process Aziraphale had vanished, and Crowley turned to see him walking across the grass behind him, scooping up long dark feathers. There were only a half dozen or so, but there were enough to raise eyebrows if found by the locals.

“Good idea,” Crowley said, moving to help. Aziraphale swept the torch’s beam back and forth across the garden, highlighting the gleaming, glossy feathers.

“I think that’s all of them,” Aziraphale said a few minutes later, holding a small sheaf of feathers, one of which was a lengthy secondary. As the angel walked back towards Crowley, flicking the torch off, the demon noticed Aziraphale was limping again.

Crowley felt an unexpected wave of guilt crash over him. How had he forgotten Aziraphale was hurt as well? “Hang on,” the demon said, reaching out to touch Aziraphale’s shoulder as the angel started past him for the cottage.

Aziraphale gave him a strange look. “You don’t have to—” he began, but Crowley was already siphoning power into the angel. He heard Aziraphale let out a long breath as Crowley’s magic washed away his injuries as well.

“Thanks,” Aziraphale said after a moment, and Crowley lifted his hand.

They stood there awkwardly for a moment, and then Crowley gestured at the feathers in Aziraphale’s hand. “We should burn those,” he said, reaching for them.

Aziraphale pulled his hand a little further away. “I’ll do it.”

Crowley frowned at him but shrugged and handed the angel the couple of feathers he’d picked up. Aziraphale started for the cottage, head down, Crowley trailing behind him uncertainly.

Aziraphale paused near the corner of the cottage and turned back to the demon. “You can stay out here for a while if you want, you know,” he said. “Stretch your wings and everything.” He looked meaningfully behind the demon at his wings, huge and gleaming like obsidian.

“Er, okay,” Crowley said, a little bemused. Aziraphale gave him a sad smile and walked back around the edge of the cottage. Crowley scratched his ear in confusion. He could usually read the angel’s mood as easily as he could gauge his own, but lately he seemed to have lost the knack. He shrugged to himself; if Aziraphale wanted to talk to him about something, then he would.

Crowley stretched his wings and proceeded to start an inspection of his own, sweeping his wings around him and running a hand along the leading edges, looking for abnormalities. The missing primaries stood out starkly, but at least the joint seemed to have healed properly. It was so great to have his wings back, Crowley reflected with cheerful fondness, great to have them no longer burning with the aftermath of heavenly ministrations.

He was so busy delighting in checking all of his feathers that he didn’t see Aziraphale glancing through one of the windows in the rear of the cottage. He didn’t see the Fallen angel’s hopeless expression, filled with such sadness as can only be felt by very old creatures watching everything they love crumble to dust around them.

It was the last time Aziraphale would see Crowley’s huge, gleaming black wings.


	9. Breakfast To Go

The days crawled by one after the other, dragging into their second week at the cottage.

Aziraphale’s mood seemed to hover perennially somewhere around pleasantly cheerful, a fact that itched at Crowley. He didn’t seem at all concerned about the gravity of the situation they were in, and would leave to weed the flower gardens whenever the demon brought anything up about Above. Aziraphale also spent most of the day out and about in the village, apparently acquainting himself with his new neighbours. Sometimes he would try to relay what he had learned to Crowley, but when the demon failed to show even a modicum of interest, the angel dropped it. 

These days Crowley just paced around the cottage, itching to do _something_. _Any_ thing. Aziraphale seemed perfectly content experimenting with blenders and buying tables, a mindset that eluded the demon. How could Aziraphale be so _calm_ about everything?

He could tell his restlessness bothered the angel, and when it got particularly bad he would take a walk and patrol—sometimes over and over—the perimeter of the spell’s influence, looking out over the rolling fields for any signs of divine or diabolical interference. He never found any, but that didn’t mean anything.

Now Crowley was walking back from one of those circuits, moving purposefully through the little village. It was late afternoon, the sun sinking lazily towards the horizon behind an iron grey wall of clouds. It was a little chilly, the first gusts of August rattling through the trees. 

He reached Somerset Lane just as the first drops began falling, and was soon walking up the gravel drive to the cottage, the rock crunching under his feet. Aziraphale had done a number on the flower gardens, and they were now neatly weeded, the dark soil overturned and awaiting bulbs.

Crowley paused for a moment outside the door, gazing down at the crumpled, expectant folds of earth. 

Then he pushed open the door and strode inside. It smelled distantly of something burning, and as he walked towards the kitchen he heard Aziraphale muttering to himself. There was a cold draft even inside the cottage, and as he stuck his head into the kitchen he saw that the angel had propped the window open and was waving a towel in its direction in an attempt to diffuse the smell.

“You about done burning things in here?” Crowley asked sarcastically. It seemed that recently the angel was determined to permanently change the smell of the cottage.

Aziraphale jumped and turned to face him, expression somewhere between guilt and irritation. “Haven’t got the hang of the timers yet,” the angel muttered, turning back to snap the oven closed.

“Well, don’t burn the place down,” Crowley said blandly, and wandered back into the living room. He plopped down on the oversized sofa Aziraphale had procured sometime last week. He stared gloomily into the ashes of the fireplace. 

Aziraphale had clearly attempted to class the room up a little with the addition of some tacky landscape prints from the seventies and a handful of books propped up on one of the bookshelves, but the place was still dreadfully tedious. He found himself missing his sleek, modern London flat very much. 

A wisp of cold air floated through the room from the kitchen and swirled some of the ashes in the grate around. Outside, the rain drummed lightly against the roof.

The walls of the cottage began to press in on Crowley, all depressingly unpainted plaster and secondhand decorations. The room suddenly felt too small, and Crowley pushed himself to his feet, unable to sit idle any longer. He walked towards the door and then paced back the other way, unable to get very far in the relatively cramped space. He could hear Aziraphale throwing something gracelessly into the sink in the kitchen.

Crowley swung around to pace the other way, feeling like a caged animal. He was trapped—trapped here in this pointless little human cottage where Aziraphale kept rearranging the three colourless paintings on the walls and burned everything that so much as entered the kitchen.

He heard the angel walk into the living room and spun on his heel again. “What are we doing here, Zira?” he demanded, feeling tense and wound up.

Aziraphale gave him a long, unreadable look as the demon continued pacing agitatedly across the room. “Hiding from Above,” he said at last. “You know that.”

“But why—” Crowley lurched to a stop, struggling to articulate. He gestured broadly to indicate the cottage. “Why are we _here?_ Why are we—we—sitting around playing _house?_ We should be looking for a cure, a reversal, a—a—something to get you back. Something to fix your wings.”

“I _am_ back,” Aziraphale growled, and there was a hint of anger in his voice. “This is me, Crowley. I’m _right here.”_

“Don’t be stupid,” Crowley snapped back. “You know what I mean.”

“It can’t be done, Crowley. I told you already.”

“Yes, it can,” the demon insisted stubbornly. “There’s got to be something—a spell, a process, something. Or someone else to talk to. We could figure something out.” Crowley turned to pace in the other direction.  “But _you_ —you’re just—just— _giving up!”_ the demon accused, waving a hand angrily in the direction of the kitchen.

Aziraphale glared at him.

“You’re acting like one of _them_ ," Crowley ploughed on. "These humans—they’re not like _us._ You just wander around in the village all day doing Go—Sa—who knows what, when we should be looking for a way to fix your wings!”

“Enough with the wings!” Aziraphale exploded. Crowley jumped a little as Aziraphale advanced on him, face a thundercloud. The angel looked properly angry, angrier than Crowley had almost ever seen him. 

Aziraphale raised his hands in frustration as he drew closer to the demon, hands locking into half-fists in front of him, as though he wanted to grab Crowley’s shoulders but stopped himself a foot short. He punctuated each syllable with an angry jerk of his hands. “I. Don’t. Have. Wings. Any. More.” 

Crowley felt his blood pressure spike as he drew himself up to his full height and spat back at the angel, “How can you be sure? Maybe they’re just in the ethereal plane, like mine—”

“No, not like yours!” Aziraphale shouted at him, gesturing sharply. “You still _have_ wings—they’re there, you can feel them, they’re just a different colour—”

“Yours turned black too!” Crowley countered angrily. “And maybe you just can’t feel them right now—”

This time Aziraphale really did grab him, roughly by the shoulders. “No—No! I felt them—they—they _burned_ , Crowley.” Aziraphale’s eyes drilled into his own, and now there was pain mixed in with the anger. “I _felt_ them _burn_. Your wings didn’t burn when you Fell. Lucifer’s didn’t.”

Crowley remembered his own Fall, slower than Aziraphale’s had been, and remembered Lucifer’s. Crowley’s feathers had already been black when he descended in the blaze of the setting sun, but in the end they hadn’t burned. Not like Aziraphale’s. He remembered the ethereal flames. He remembered the scream.

“And you— _you_ still have your powers,” Aziraphale continued bitterly. “You can heal, perform miracles. What can I do? Nothing. _Nothing_. I’m _human_ , Crowley. You think…you think I _like_ this?” Aziraphale took his hands off Crowley’s shoulders and whipped around, taking a couple of steps towards the kitchen and gesturing at it angrily. “You think I _like_ not being able to figure out a bloody _oven?_ But I have to, I _have_ to, because I’ll _starve_ otherwise. And the temperature! It’s freezing all the time in this bloody place, and I don’t know how to fix it.” He paced angrily in another direction. 

“I’ve got to eat, Crowley, every _bloody_ day; I’ve got to sleep _every_ night, but I can’t get a minute of rest because I can’t even close my eyes before I’m having some bloody awful nightmare. And look at me!” He spun on Crowley and gestured angrily at himself. “How old do you think this corporation is? Fifty? Fifty-five? I’m going to _age_ , Crowley, and then I’m going to _die,_ and I’ve only got some forty years on the outside because I haven’t got a scrap of power left to keep me alive. Not an ounce. Not like _you.”_

Aziraphale turned angrily, pacing away from where Crowley stood in shock. He’d never seen Aziraphale explode like this before. “When I Fell, I _felt_ it—trust me, there’s nothing left. Not a bloody _inch_ of divinity anywhere. I was—was—forced into this—this— _mortal corporation,_ and anything that didn’t fit was stripped away and _burned_. I’m useless, Crowley, plain and simple. Can’t heal so much as a paper cut, can’t make myself something to eat out of a bloody _box_ , can’t defend myself if Michael comes knocking, can barely help you fix your own wings. There’s no—no—there’s no _point_ to me. What use am I to anyone, a Fallen angel?” 

Aziraphale laughed, loud and bitter. “But I’m trying anyway, you see, because for some reason God saw fit to make me die slowly. Because I’m human now, and there’s nothing bloody else I _can_ do. I can’t even leave this damn village. I’m just _stuck_ here, hiding like the powerless coward I am.” 

Aziraphale stormed back and forth across the room, getting progressively more bitter. “And I know you hate it here—don’t deny it, it’s written all over your face—so you might as well just go now. Don’t know why you stayed this long as it is. I can’t help you anymore, and I’m trapped here, but you can go. Fly away, since _you_ still have wings. I don’t care.”

Crowley felt a fresh wave of anger roll over him. “I’m just as trapped here as you are,” he snapped. “Above wants me dead too, remember?”

“Oh, _please,”_ Aziraphale spat, and the venom in his voice stung. “They had you for _weeks._ They know you didn’t bloody well do anything. And I _Fell_ —you can’t force an angel to Fall. If there had been a spell or whatever rubbish they were spouting, I wouldn’t have Fallen because it wasn’t my own choice. They’ll have figured that out by now. They know it wasn’t you. 

“But _me_ —do you know how many of my brothers— _our_ brothers—I killed? Hmm? To them, I’m the new _Lucifer_. Maybe _worse_. I’m a traitor, plain and simple, but there’s no master plan on the books about me for them to follow. No ineffable plan. I’m a wildcard, a turncoat, and that makes me a threat. No, they won’t go after _you.”_ The angel’s voice was bitter again.

Crowley glared at Aziraphale, hating the truth in the angel’s words.

“Just go back to London,” Aziraphale snapped, turning on him suddenly. “Go back to your flat, and the Bentley, and tie up some telephone lines or whatever it is you do nowadays. Make a big deal to Below about how you survived Heaven’s worst; they’ll probably promote you. Or, better yet, tell them you killed me. Better for everyone.”

Crowley drew an angry breath, feeling his hands clench into fists at his side.

“Just go already!” Aziraphale shouted at him, gesturing sharply at the door, voice rising. “I know you want to. Go back to your life, since it’s so much better than a _human’s.”_

“You know, maybe I will,” Crowley shot back viciously, taking two steps towards the angel.

“Yeah? Well, _go,_ then,” Aziraphale snapped, voice jumping an octave and breaking.

“I am!” Crowley shouted, and turned abruptly and marched towards the cottage’s door. He yanked it open, strode out into the cold, rainy twilight, and slammed the door behind him so hard he heard something fall off the wall and crash to the floor.

The demon stormed off across the gravel drive, rain pelting him as he reached the road and strode down it, leaving the cottage and Aziraphale behind.

His mind was a whirlwind of thought and emotion, swinging between anger, frustration, helplessness, pity, and something that might have been fear. He didn’t know what he was feeling, didn’t know what he wanted to feel. He just needed to put distance between himself and Aziraphale.

The sun was dipping near the horizon in a burst of purple and orange when Crowley realised his feet had taken him to the little pond outside of the village. He looked at it uncertainly for a long while, the rain fading the whole scene towards grey, and eventually walked down towards the shore.

He strode out onto the pier and stood there for a moment, right on the edge. Then he sat down, feet dangling about a foot above the slate grey water. He was soon soaked from the rain, but didn’t bother miracling himself dry. 

He sat in silence for a time, letting the fire of his anger die out, leaving him feeling hollow and empty.

For the first time, he allowed himself to think properly about what Falling must have meant to Aziraphale.

Crowley hadn’t been an angel for very long before he’d Fallen, and since about half of Heaven had been doing it at the time, it had seemed more rebellious than damning. It had been more about defying Daddy and joining a band than it had been about doing great evil and being punished. But Aziraphale—he’d been an angel for _six thousand years._ It was all he’d ever known. And then, for all of that to be stripped away…it didn’t bear imagining.

Compared to angels and demons, humans were incredibly fragile. They required very precise temperatures and pressures, and needed a steady supply of food, water, oxygen, and sleep. Over the years, Crowley and Aziraphale had tried each of these things out, since humans had perfected many of them into their own sort of art forms, but they’d always been more like hobbies to dabble in than serious commitments. 

Even now, Crowley realised, sitting here on this pier, he enjoyed a privilege Aziraphale would never have again. He could sit here, in the cold and wet in the middle of the night, and feel the effects of none of them if he didn’t want to. His demonic power rendered what could be serious dangers to humans mere nuisances at best.

He remembered the day he and Aziraphale had come to the village, and how, when they’d met Donnie, the angel had kept stealing biscuits. And later that evening, Aziraphale had eaten both his own and the demon’s hamburgers at the pub. As he thought things through, Crowley realised with a start that they’d skipped lunch that day, busy as they were settling into the cottage. It hadn’t even occurred to Crowley, but he realised now that Aziraphale must have missed the meal greatly, especially when he’d still been recovering. How had Crowley not noticed?

And then there had been Aziraphale’s recent fascination with cooking. Crowley had just assumed it was a byproduct of having a kitchen and therefore somewhere to experiment. He had never put two and two together, had never allowed himself to think that far ahead.

He knew why, of course. Because being human meant being mortal, and Crowley had refused to accept that. Aziraphale was, to him, nothing less than the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, defender of the Earth during the Apocalypse, and slightly fussy bookshop owner. He was an angel, through and through, had always been and always would be. It was just what he _was._

As Crowley sat there, staring at the little ripples the rain cast on the pond, he could see now that the angel had been trying to adjust as best he could: learning to cook, decorating the cottage, going out and talking with the other villagers. It was a bad situation, and Aziraphale had been trying to make the best of it. Being human was a death sentence, and Aziraphale had been trying to turn it into a lease on life. Meanwhile, all Crowley had been doing was reminding him of the bottom line. But, of course, in the end, Crowley didn’t have to accept it. Neither, really, did Aziraphale, but it was the angel who was going to pay for it either way.

He remembered Aziraphale’s cheerful behaviour, ever since Crowley had healed him at the Pulsifers’ house. He’d thought it seemed forced at the time, and he knew now that it was. He thought about Aziraphale’s outburst in the cottage, about how hard it was being human, a laundry list of things he had never once mentioned to Crowley and that the demon had never even bothered to consider. Maybe Crowley wasn’t as good at reading Aziraphale as he'd thought he was. Or maybe the angel had been hiding those things deliberately, making it appear as though he was doing better than he actually was. Maybe he’d been doing so on Crowley’s behalf. It sounded exactly like something Aziraphale would do.

Crowley stared morosely across the water at the last vestiges of purple sinking below the horizon, partially obscured by the slanting rain. 

Aziraphale _was_ right about a lot of things, though. Crowley was probably safe from Above, and if he kept a low profile, he could likely return to London. The thought of sitting in the Bentley again tugged at him, but he pushed it away, because Aziraphale had been right about something else as well: he didn’t have that much time left. Even if Crowley kept the angel in good health with his magic, it was doubtful he could sustain him far past ninety. Demonic magic was notoriously unreliable when it came to natural illnesses.

Some forty years, Aziraphale had said. It was such an impossibly tiny span for someone who’d once taken an entire century off for a nice nap. Crowley thought about all the centuries, all the millennia he’d known Aziraphale for. Now that the clock was ticking, it seemed like they had wasted so much time.

But forty years was ages for a human, Crowley reflected hopefully. For a human, eighty or ninety years was all a person could hope for, so everything else was measured against that number. Forty years was half a lifespan. A very long time, for them.

Crowley stared at the horizon. _Forty years of the sun rising and setting every day over this pond,_ he thought. _Forty years, in and out, every day._ Maybe if he tried to see things from a more human perspective…maybe forty years could be a lifetime. Maybe it would have to be.

Crowley stayed there, sitting motionless on the edge of the pier, for a very long time. The last traces of the sun vanished beneath the water and the rain petered out. The clouds swept by overhead, and the stars made an appearance, cold and distant as they turned above him. The wind was cold, but Crowley didn’t so much as shiver. Time washed over him like a wave, but he was immune to its effects.

When he finally stood up, the sun was making a re-appearance on the opposite horizon, spreading pale milky bands across the predawn sky. Crowley miracled the last of the rain from his suit and walked calmly into Midfarthing, nodding at a dark-skinned man who ran by jogging with a dog.

He found his way to Mendellson’s cafe without too much difficulty, and ordered two breakfasts to go. 

As he waited, he drummed his fingers absently on the counter. A handful of people were drinking coffee nearby, and someone was digging into an omelette at a corner booth, but it was still very quiet. In the right frame of mind, Crowley decided, it could be seen as peaceful.

Once the breakfasts were ready, he miracled up two tenners to pay and swept out of the cafe. He pointed his feet towards Somerset Lane.

Of course he could never have really left Aziraphale here all alone. Sure, he’d rather have been back in London, but not if it was at the cost of abandoning Aziraphale in that dreadful cottage. It wasn’t just because the angel’s days were now numbered, or because he wouldn’t be able to spend any more time with Aziraphale when his days were up. It wasn’t just because he wanted to find a way to put things right, or because he felt he had to stick around because it was his fault in the first place. It was mainly because he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Aziraphale to face this alone, when Crowley could face it with him.

The demon walked up the drive to the cottage and knocked carefully on the door. Everything smelled fresh and new after the rain, and the flowerbeds looked particularly rejuvenated.

Crowley shifted uncertainly on the stoop, wondering suddenly how he would be received. He shifted the breakfasts under his arm and was about to knock again when the door swung open.

“Who…” Aziraphale’s voice trailed off. He stared at Crowley. 

The angel looked terrible. His hair was a mess and his eyes were slightly red, ringed by dark circles. For a fleeting moment he looked utterly exhausted and haunted and more defeated than anyone Crowley had ever seen; then his expression shifted directly into shock.

“Hi,” Crowley said, as brightly as he could manage. “Can I come in?”

Aziraphale stared at him for a long moment, and then wordlessly opened the door and stepped aside. 

“I brought breakfast,” Crowley said, walking inside. “Thought you might be peckish. It’s no Ritz, but it’ll have to do.” He deposited the food on the rickety table and turned back to the angel, who was still looking at him with an expression just short of utter disbelief.

“You…came back,” Aziraphale said slowly, closing the door and approaching Crowley cautiously, as though he was afraid the demon would disappear like a mirage if he got too close.

“Well, yeah,” Crowley said, shrugging as casually as he could while ruthlessly crushing the part of him that wanted to give the bedraggled angel an enormous hug. The demon moved into the kitchen and rooted around for some mismatched cutlery. “Couldn’t let you have all the fun by yourself, could I?” he asked, keeping his tone light as he located a pair of forks. He began setting the table. “Besides, London was getting a bit stuffy anyway.”

Aziraphale helped him silently, still looking mildly baffled. Soon everything was ready, and they sat down to eat.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Crowley said at length, fiddling with his fork. He glanced up and looked Aziraphale squarely in the eye. “I _am_ going to find a way to get you back your divinity. But until I do, I’m staying right here.”

The look Aziraphale gave him was so profoundly grateful that Crowley shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Thank you, Crowley,” the angel said.

“Yeah, yeah, save it for when I do something worth thanking me for,” he said, waving his fork at the angel’s breakfast as he felt the tips of his ears burn bright red. “Now eat something. You look terrible.”

Aziraphale smiled sadly and only picked up his fork when Crowley started in on his own breakfast. He wasn’t hungry, of course; demons didn’t get hungry. But he ate it anyway, and he could tell Aziraphale appreciated it. 


	10. Ambrose Ziraphale

The days blurred into weeks, and summer waned into autumn in the snug little village of Midfarthing.

Aziraphale planted tulip bulbs in the flowerbeds in front of the cottage and diligently watered them every morning. Crowley asked him dryly if he planned on taking a break over the winter.

The demon made some phone calls and got them signed up for a number of catalogues through the post, which he passed on to Aziraphale to page through. Before long the postman (a middle-aged balding Egyptian man with a penchant for chatting with Aziraphale about proper flower care) was delivering packages almost daily. A couple times lorries came by to drop off furniture Aziraphale had picked out. The intended effect was achieved, however, and before long the cottage was looking a little less barren.

Handsome dark wood tables, chairs, and hutches cluttered every wall, until Crowley had to point out that if the angel bought any more furniture they’d have to start selling some as well, because they just didn't have that kind of square footage. So the angel switched to buying books. He spent days paging through the phone books of a dozen cities, calling up bookshops and chatting, sometimes for hours, with the owners, asking after their rarest books and explaining that he was unfortunately unable to travel to see them in person, but was willing to pay to have them shipped. The bookshelves near the fireplace were soon filled, books of every description sandwiched together in their new home. 

Aziraphale noticeably cheered up as the books started trickling in, and having the empty shelves no longer staring at them blankly did give the place a much more lived-in feel.

The angel eventually got a handle on cooking, something that took several visits from local housewives who’d taken pity on Aziraphale. Once he figured out how to properly use the oven, things improved rapidly. The barman, Bert, started giving him cooking tips as well, saying that while Harper over at the cafe played his cards close to the vest, _he_ was not above a little free recipe-sharing. Most of the time, for lunch the angel settled on a sandwich or something else he could make quickly, but for dinner he would pick a recipe out of one of the books he’d bought and attempt to create something edible. Crowley gave him a 50/50 success rate.

Depending on what the demon was doing during mealtimes, he tried to hang around with Aziraphale while the angel ate. This usually made Crowley a little peckish, so he’d often eat something as well. Additionally, he made a rule that if Aziraphale spent more than thirty minutes making something, he should at least try it; if he didn’t, the angel’s face would fall and he would be quiet for the rest of the day, which just brought the general depression of the whole place up a couple of notches. Better to humour him. The food never compared to the quality they’d enjoyed in the past, at Europe’s most elite restaurants, but Crowley told himself it was the thought that counted. Crowley told himself a lot of things these days.

Things had settled down with remarkable speed into a hesitant normalcy after their shouting match, a fact that nettled at Crowley sometimes. He’d kept a close eye on Aziraphale for the first couple of days afterwards, looking for any way to help out. He’d tracked the cold drafts in the cottage to the kitchen window and, after patching the frame up with a little miracled stone and sealant, realised that turning the thermostat up on the little heater would warm the place up. Evidently Norman had turned it down before leaving. 

Crowley wasn’t sure if there was anything he could do about Aziraphale’s nightmares. The angel waved away his concerns when he hesitantly brought the topic up, saying they weren’t all that bad. Nevertheless, if Crowley sat up all night on his own bed, he could sometimes hear the angel muttering in his sleep from the next room over, occasionally thrashing around. The morning after especially long incidents, the angel would look particularly tired as he set about making himself toast. Crowley decided the best policy was to not mention anything and act like he hadn’t noticed; if a person was entitled to privacy in anything, it was their nightmares. Aziraphale never mentioned them, and Crowley followed his lead.

He had more pressing things to think about, anyway. After a couple of days, he’d made a number of extremely discreet phone calls to the only informants he thought he could trust, and had instructed them ship him a number of very old, very rare books. Aziraphale had been quite taken aback when he’d opened the box, expecting them to be something he’d ordered. Crowley had warned him quickly not to touch the top one, which had a hellish sigil embossed into the cover in dried blood. 

The demon went through every inch of the four spell books, looking for any information about Falling, humans, or burning wings. Unfortunately, the books were more interested in figuring out how to damn human souls than return them to divinity. Which left Crowley at a bit of an impasse. He sincerely doubted the method of unFalling was written down anywhere, and if it was it was probably locked very deep in one of Heaven’s vaults. Out of reach, in other words.

So he decided to muse on the problem for a while, allowing himself some time to enjoy the present. Maybe a solution would make itself known in due time.

Aziraphale started dragging the demon out into the village, introducing him to Midfarthing's various inhabitants. Crowley’s first impression was that it was all incredibly tedious, but after a while he began to enjoy it a little despite himself. He was beginning to feel his old affection for humanity kicking back in again. 

There was Bert at the pub, of course, who had started up a little game with Aziraphale of trying to guess what the “A.” in “A. Ziraphale” stood for (one day Aziraphale mentioned to Crowley that he should probably pick one before Bert exhausted all the names starting with ‘A,’ and then promptly announced that he thought Alfonzo was a nice name. Crowley told him point-blank that he was not letting the angel call himself something so horrendous. He also forbade Adam, on principle. After proposing Anthony—“You can't call yourself that, angel, that's _my_ fake name,”—Aziraphale finally settled on Ambrose. Bert hadn’t figured it out yet; he was still guessing things like Albert and Antonio).

Crowley did his best to politely avoid Donnie and her floral-patterned living room, though she enjoyed ambushing them at the cafe. Harper, the owner of the cafe (confusingly called Mendellson’s, after the previous owner), was a good guy and also an avid book collector. Once he got wind that Aziraphale was getting his hands on incunables, he demanded to come over and take a look. After that, he made sure to give the angel and demon extra helpings of whatever they ordered at the cafe, for the privilege of being able to come over and page through them whenever he wanted. When Aziraphale commented that 'Harper' was a bit of an unusual name—like the angel could talk—the cafe owner explained that it was his last name, his first being, for a nice change, not completely hideous, but instead incredibly common. "Do you know how many James's there are? A bloody awful lot, that's how many."

There was Marie at the corner grocer's, where Aziraphale exclusively bought his food, and Timothy over at the petrol station, who was one of the handful of under-eighteens in the village. Jerry Henderson, owner of the petrol station bearing his name, was the only other employee, and reminisced openly about the days when Midfarthing was a place on the up and up. Father Gilbert was the only person both Aziraphale and Crowley actively avoided without even bothering to meet. He ran the little parish church, and though he tried to greet them after a few weeks, Aziraphale explained that they “weren’t the praying type” and asked him very politely to not waste his time on them. Crowley told him not so politely to stuff it.

Aziraphale, of course, was particularly fond of those villagers like the seamstress Faye Uphill and old Jack Livingstone, who ran the little corner shop and always gave free sweets to the children. Crowley, meanwhile, found a little bit of admiration in his heart for Walter Jamieson, the owner of the local bank and a man who was held in universal suspicious mistrust, as he was thought to have messed with interest rates and added clauses to standard contracts. The man was working small-scale evil at the very best, but Crowley walked into the bank one day and read over one of the contracts and was suitably impressed. The mess of legalese allowed the accounts to function normally in all cases except those in which the bank happened to run a little short of money, in which case it could default on all of its loans with no consequences. It also had a sneaky little clause that practically legalised embezzling. Mr Jamieson walked around in a suit a little too nice for his salary and drove a Jaguar, something else Crowley found very amusing.

A few more weeks passed, and Aziraphale announced he was going to work part-time at the corner shop. Crowley wasn’t sure what possessed the angel to want to do such a thing, but Aziraphale insisted it would be good to get out of the cottage every now and then. Besides, Aziraphale added, since Crowley hadn’t found any leads on the angel thing, he might as well do something with his time that wasn’t just sitting around reading books all day. Crowley pointed out that that was all Aziraphale had done for the last two hundred years, but the angel countered that it had been more of a hobby than a full-time job. The conversation trailed off about then, both of them silently reflecting that it was a bit difficult for an angel to perform miracles and do his duty without actually _being_ an angel.

That thought was always there, lurking just underneath the surface like an undercurrent in a still river. Because as well as Aziraphale and Crowley were adjusting on the surface to human life, there were times, some clearer than others, that reminded them that it was all just a charade.

Sure, Aziraphale might— _technically_ —be…human, but that still wasn’t what he _was_. He had six thousand years of memories stacked up in his head, and more knowledge about the divine and diabolical than any ordinary human had ever possessed. And if it was a ruse for Aziraphale, it was a full-blown conspiracy for Crowley, still a fully-fledged demon. 

For the first couple of weeks after getting his wings fixed, Crowley went around miracling up anything he wanted on a moment’s notice, like a glass of water or a bit of pepper to spice up one of Aziraphale’s particularly bland dishes. After miracling up a glass of vintage wine one evening, he caught Aziraphale giving him a longing look out of the corner of his eye. The demon started guiltily and asked if Aziraphale wanted anything, but he shook himself out of it, said no, and went to make himself a cup of tea. Crowley was halfway through the glass of delightful wine when he wondered why the angel hadn’t just asked him to miracle up a cup of tea. It might not have been exactly up to Aziraphale’s high standards, but it probably would have been better than the limited selection the grocer's offered. The wine abruptly soured in his mouth, and Crowley stared down into the red liquid for a long time before miracling it away. 

Later in the week, Aziraphale decided to exchange one of the tacky landscape prints from the seventies for a lovely antique pendulum wall clock. He spent some time trying to get the nails in the wall oriented right, and then still managed to hit his thumb with the hammer. Crowley, who was standing nearby watching the angel attempt carpentry with some amusement, watched as Aziraphale held his hurt hand out in front of him and just stared at it. After about three seconds, the angel shook himself out of it, a flash of frustration crossing his face. He walked towards the kitchen with his hand out in front of him, evidently intending to run it under cold water, but Crowley intercepted him halfway there. 

“Hang on,” the demon said, touching him on the wrist long enough for his magic to flow into Aziraphale’s hand. “There.”

Crowley took a step back, feeling quite pleased with himself. Then he caught sight of Aziraphale’s expression, hovering somewhere between envy and annoyance. The angel quickly wiped his face clean. “Thanks,” he said, though the word sounded unusually flat.

The angel went back to pounding on the nails, and Crowley remained where he was, rather bemused. It was only a few minutes later, when the clock was resting neatly against the wall, pendulum swinging lazily back and forth, that Crowley realised Aziraphale must have momentarily forgotten he no longer had his powers, and tried to heal his own hand on reflex. 

Then there were the birds. Mostly little songbirds, flitting through the garden and singing from the trees. Aziraphale bought a make-it-yourself wooden bird feeder shaped like a house from the corner shop and assembled it in an afternoon, taking several hours to meticulously paint its unadorned sides. He then managed to get his hands on a large wooden stake, hammered it into the ground, and crookedly attached the bird feeder to the top. He sprinkled it with birdseed and bread crumbs every morning.

Crowley watched all this without particular interest; so what if the angel wanted to birdwatch? Sometimes Aziraphale would sit outside or by the window for hours, evidently just watching the sun move across the sky as birds flitted by. Crowley could never sit still for such a long period of time; he usually wandered off to find something more engaging to do. It took him two weeks to realise Aziraphale was looking at their wings.

A couple of days after that, Crowley, about to miracle up a glass of wine for lunch, stopped himself with his hand halfway to where he’d planned to pluck the glass out of the air. He hastily retracted his hand instead, telling himself he should tag along to the grocer's the next time Aziraphale went, and look at their probably quite sad wine collection.

He was still grimacing a little at the thought when Aziraphale said, “I don’t mind, you know.”

“Hmm?” Crowley looked up, struggling to remember the last thing he had said aloud to the angel.

“You can still miracle things up. It’s okay. No sense in you pretending like you’re not still a demon.”

“Oh, ah,” Crowley stammered, caught off guard. “Er…you sure?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “No reason you shouldn’t be able to.”

“Er, okay,” Crowley said uncertainly. Aziraphale looked like he was waiting for Crowley to finish conjuring his glass of wine, so the demon added lamely, “Changed my mind, actually. Er.”

The rest of the meal took far too long.

After that, Crowley started working on using his magic less. He found a not-completely-dreadful bottle of wine at the grocer's and shared it with the angel over some spaghetti that was surprisingly palatable.

Aziraphale mentioned again that Crowley didn’t have to stop using his powers on his account, but Crowley shrugged the angel off. It just didn’t seem very fair to him.

Sometimes, when he was unoccupied, the demon’s mind would drift to Aziraphale’s situation, and how he would feel if their places had been reversed. If Crowley had been forced into his human corporation, immortality and powers stripped from him. It made him wonder about a great many things.

“Zira,” Crowley said pensively one day, sitting in the living room with his feet up on a footstool (at the angel’s insistence; Crowley didn’t see what was wrong with stretching out lengthwise on the sofa with his feet up on the opposite armrest) and absently watching the pendulum of the wall clock swing back and forth.

“Hmm?” the angel replied, looking up from the impressively thick book he was reading.

Crowley watched the pendulum tick back and forth. “Does it hurt?” he asked at length. He turned his head to look at the angel. “Being mortal? Not just the having to eat and sleep, I mean.”

Aziraphale looked suddenly uncomfortable. His eyes dropped to the book in his lap and he shrugged casually, fidgeting. He looked back up at Crowley, and his expression was noncommittal. “No, not really,” he said in the most unconvincing tone of voice the demon had ever heard. Aziraphale looked back down at the book. 

“Ah, okay, angel,” Crowley said uncertainly, and let it drop.

There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Aziraphale said quietly, “You don’t have to call me that anymore, you know.”

Crowley looked at him sharply. 

“I’m not an angel anymore,” Aziraphale said, addressing this to the book in his lap. “You don’t have to—”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Crowley interrupted, standing. He started towards the door, feeling the sudden need to get some fresh air. “You’re still an angel, Zira. Always will be.”

And that was all Crowley would say on the subject.

Several weeks later, the two of them dropped into the pub for a late dinner and some drinks. Bert opened with his usual, “How about Albus?”

Aziraphale laughed a little and shook his head as he took a seat at the bar. “Not even close.”

“Hallo, Bert,” Crowley greeted the barman as he settled himself next to Aziraphale, fingers drumming against the polished surface of the bar. "I’ll have a cheeseburger and try out some of that new Smirnoff you were talking about earlier.” The demon considered. “Make it a White Russian.” 

“Sure thing,” Bert said cheerily. He turned to Aziraphale. “And for you, Mr My-Name-Is-Not-Albus Ziraphale?”

The angel chuckled and squinted at the bottles against the far wall. “I’ll have the same thing as him, and let’s make it a chicken sandwich.”

Bert nodded and set about making the cocktails. A moment later he slid them across the bar to them. “Amandus?” he guessed.

“Nope,” Aziraphale said cheerfully.

Bert scowled good-naturedly at them. “But he’s the patron saint of barmen, you know,” he pointed out. “Good old Amandus.”

“I’m afraid he can’t help you here,” Aziraphale said solemnly.

Bert gave a short laugh. “I’ll figure it out in the end,” he said cheerfully and, after a glance around at the other customers, disappeared into the back room to pass their order on to the cook. 

“Anything exciting happen at the shop today?” Crowley asked Aziraphale once Bert was gone, not particularly interested but trying to make conversation. It was ever so dull sitting around the cottage all by himself while the angel went out to his “job.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “Got a box of soap in today. They don’t move a lot of product, you know.”

Crowley grunted assent. “Still giving those sweets out to kids for free? Terrible business model, that.”

They went on like this for several minutes, until Bert returned and slid their orders in front of them. Crowley was acquiring quite a taste for the pub’s food, and was also experiencing hunger on a regular basis around mealtimes. It was a side effect of following too consistent of a schedule, the same with sleeping, but it wasn’t a habit he cared enough to bother breaking. He was going to end up eating with Aziraphale two or three times every day anyway, so there really wasn’t much point.

The White Russians were quite good, and evidently had a higher alcohol content than the demon had first suspected, because by the third one he was feeling an extremely pleasant buzz. Aziraphale seemed further gone, and it occurred to Crowley that he might have lost some of his alcohol tolerance when he…Fell. And this was the first time he’d had anything stronger than a pint of the house lager.

Aziraphale was usually quite a happy drunk, something Crowley had always found immensely amusing. Since they usually drank to escape some unhappy reality, it was quite relaxing in those cases to just laugh uncontrollably with someone through a pleasant, drunken haze. 

But tonight was taking a different turn. The more the angel drank, the more depressed he seemed to get. 

“Aoww, Crowley, why did this happen to _us?”_ Aziraphale lamented moodily, fishing unsuccessfully for the scattering of chips left on his plate.

“Why does anything?” Crowley pointed out. “The ineffable plan, remember? Screwed us right from the beginning.”

“Stupid plan,” the angel mumbled. “Stupid bloody plan.”

“You’re not wrong,” Crowley muttered, taking another drink. The vodka burned pleasantly on its way down.

“It’s not like—not like other angels haven’t done worse,” Aziraphale complained, successfully locating a stray chip and poking it angrily against the edge of his plate. “They didn’t Fall.”

Crowley said nothing, staring down at his glass. 

“I mean, Michael’s more of a git than I ever was,” Aziraphale continued. “But  _no,_ he gets to stay immortal, gets to keep _his_ wings…”

Crowley gave the angel a sidelong glance. Aziraphale looked upset and frustrated, and as he watched the angel threw the chip down in disgust and reached for his cocktail instead. 

“There’s no bloody _justice_ in it,” Aziraphale growled, taking a gulp around the ice.

“No,” Crowley said. “There isn’t.”

“First the bloody _Apocalypse,”_ Aziraphale said after a brief hiccup, “and then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, _this!”_ The angel glared at his drink. After a moment he sighed and put his elbows up on the bar, leaning forward against it in a defeated movement, shoulders drooping. “Maybe we weren’t supposed to stop it,” he said with sudden melancholy. “Maybe we were just supposed to let it happen. Maybe this is our punishment.” His voice took a bitter turn.

“Hey,” Crowley intervened, a little taken aback by the angel’s sudden change in focus. “But preventing the Apocalypse was always part of the ineffable plan, right? We were just doing what the big man wanted us to do anyway.”

“I made that up,” Aziraphale said moodily, taking another drink. “That ineffable plan rubbish. Made it up so ‘ze angels would go away.” He hiccuped. “Demons, too.” He sniffed and look sadly at Crowley. A corner of his mouth twitched up nostalgically. “Those were the days.”

Crowley gave the angel a thin-lipped, worried smile. “Yeah,” he agreed. He remembered their adventures during the Apocalypse, back when it was just an angel and a demon against the world. Now it was only half of that. “Those were the days.”

Aziraphale sniffed loudly, and when Crowley glanced back over at him, he was surprised to see the angel on the verge of tears. “Back when I—when I—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Crowley said quickly, feeling some of his own buzz fade away. He cast a worried look around the rest of the pub. It was fairly full, as per the usual, and no one appeared to be giving them any particular notice, but that wouldn’t last long if Aziraphale started breaking down and going on loudly about angels and demons. 

“I miss my wings _so much,_ Crow’sley,” Aziraphale hiccuped, sniffing and reaching out to grab at the demon’s arm. “Don’t know what ‘chuve got ’til it’s g—gone,” he moaned. “No more’s flying— _never—_ I _loved—_ ”

Crowley watched in alarm as the angel devolved into tears in front of him. At the other end of the bar, he saw Bert give them a strange look.

“Er, shh,” Crowley said awkwardly, patting the angel uncertainly on the shoulder. Taking this as an invitation, Aziraphale burst into a fresh round of tears and listed towards Crowley, leaning his head against the demon’s shoulder.

“I’m nots an angel any’smore…not anymore…”

Crowley glanced around awkwardly and patted Aziraphale on the back some more. With his spare hand, he fished around in his pocket and produced several tenners. He slapped them on the bar, signaled to Bert that he was taking Aziraphale outside, and moved to stand up.

“S’come back, Crow’sley,” Aziraphale mumbled in distress as Crowley pulled away from him.

“It’s fine, just come here,” Crowley said, all but pulling the angel off the barstool. Aziraphale’s hands found his forearm and clung to it as the demon tugged him towards the door. Aziraphale staggered after him on unsteady feet, but the demon managed to navigate him around the tables and out of the pub door without too much difficulty.

Once they were out in the cool, slightly chilly night air, Aziraphale took a couple deep, shaky breaths, eyes wide.

Crowley rocked to a halt, watching him with a steadying hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “You okay, angel?”

For a moment it looked like Aziraphale might be sobering up a little, but then he hiccuped and dissolved back into tears. 

Crowley started reaching down inside of himself, looking for enough power to banish the alcohol from the angel’s bloodstream, and stopped himself just short. He looked at Aziraphale, currently swaying in the cold night air, painfully human and stuck that way. Crowley let his power fall away. He wrapped an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders.

“Let’s get you home, huh?”

Aziraphale hiccuped again, leaning against him. “So sorry,” he mumbled, “fors not beings an angel any’smore.” He sniffed loudly as Crowley started leading him down the edge of the road. “So sorry.”

“It’s okay, Aziraphale,” Crowley said. “You don’t need to apologise. It’s not your fault.”

“Yes its is,” Aziraphale protested, voice distressed and slurred. “Those angels—they weres there for mes—back at the bookshop—”

“Don’t worry about it, angel,” Crowley interrupted, feeling his grip on Aziraphale’s shoulder tighten. “They would have come after me eventually.”

Aziraphale gave a sudden sob and came to a halt. Crowley was forced to a stop as well, looking at the angel silhouetted in the twilight. Aziraphale’s free hand found the lapel of Crowley’s ever-present suit jacket and latched on. His eyes, watery and dark in the low light, found the demon’s.

“Crow’sley,” Aziraphale declared wretchedly, sounding on the verge of tears, “I’m so, _so_ sorry abouts what hap—happen’d to yous.”

Crowley felt himself grow still. Aziraphale started crying again as his hand moved to the demon’s left shoulder, where the deep wound had been, and touched it gently, almost fearfully. 

“It took, just, so long to figures out where they’d t—taken yous,” Aziraphale sobbed, dropping his head so it leaned against Crowley’s chest. “It was _we—weeks_ , Crow’sley, I’m so—so—sorr—y.” He broke into another bout of sobs, clinging to Crowley and shaking and crying all at the same time.

The demon stood there in shock, with no idea how to react. He glanced around the darkened street, half hoping for someone to be passing by so he could lock eyes with them, gesture hopelessly at Aziraphale, and make a ‘well, what’cha gonna do?’ expression, but the street was empty. There was also little humour in the situation. After several long seconds of Aziraphale crying dejectedly into his lapels, Crowley cautiously stuck his arms out and gave the angel an uncertain, light hug.

Aziraphale gasped with a fresh sob, threw his arms around the demon, and pulled him into a crushing embrace.

All the air left Crowley’s lungs in a rush as the angel’s grip tightened. Aziraphale was crying into Crowley’s shoulder now, golden hair tickling the demon’s cheek.

“Zira,” he gasped breathlessly. 

Aziraphale made no response except to squeeze him even tighter, and it took several long minutes before Crowley could extricate himself.

As he freed himself, the demon realised Aziraphale’s shaking wasn’t all from crying; he was shivering from the cold night air as well. Crowley frowned and automatically reached to warm the angel with a touch of well-placed magic, but stopped himself short for the second time that night. After a moment’s thought, he tugged off his suit jacket instead and draped it around the angel’s shivering shoulders. 

Aziraphale hiccuped and tugged the material tighter around himself as Crowley started to lead him back down the road. Aziraphale looked to have calmed down a little, or at least tired himself out, and Crowley succeeded in walking him halfway back to the cottage before the angel had anything else coherent to say.

“It—its—it does hurts, you know,” Aziraphale slurred from where he was half-leaning against the demon for support. 

Crowley glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

Aziraphale hiccuped pathetically. “Being human. Mo—mortal. Hur—ts all the t—i—imes.”

Crowley felt his lips thin in worry.

“I do—don’t think they fe—el it,” the angel hiccuped gloomily, eyes tracking along the darkened ground. “The hu—mans. But it’s like—like—time. Can feel—time.”

Crowley stared at him.

The angel gestured to nothing in particular with his free hand, indicating some expanse visible only to him. “ _Time,”_ the angel stressed again, and then quite seemed to lose his train of thought. “Whats was I s’saying, Crow’sley?”

Crowley swallowed. “Mortality.”

Aziraphale hiccuped. “Yeahs. Thannnks. It’s like time, rights? It’s like knowing death. You’re dyings already, see? Every—every days, you can feels it, feels death—feels time slip—slipping aways—” Abruptly Aziraphale burst into fresh tears and ground to a halt. The cottage was just a little ways up the road now, and Crowley tried propelling the angel the remaining distance, but Aziraphale wouldn’t be moved.

The angel grabbed at Crowley’s shoulders, missing the left one on his first pass. His fingers bit into the demon’s skin through the fabric of his button-up as he stared at Crowley with urgent, muddled fear.

“Don’t let me die, Crow’sley,” Aziraphale begged, voice jumping an octave in desperation. “I don’t want—don’t—die.” He broke into a fresh round of sobs. “Please, Crow’sley—I don’t want its to end. I don’t want—don’t want—I wants to stay—stays with—with—”

Crowley’s throat closed as he felt himself pull the distraught angel into another hug. “You’re not going to die,” he heard himself promise as soon as he could find his voice. “I’ll find a way to save you, I swear. You’ll be an angel again before you know it.”

Aziraphale continued his terrified sobbing, but Crowley managed to get him moving again, his only thought that the sooner he could put the angel in bed the better off both of them would be.

Aziraphale’s stumbling had increased by the time the demon managed to find his keys and let them into the little cottage. He was clinging to Crowley again, sniffling loudly and smelling strongly of vodka.

The demon took one look at the stairs and decided Aziraphale could sleep it off on the sofa. Crowley carefully directed the angel to said piece of furniture, which Aziraphale sank onto far too willingly. The demon carefully tugged his suit jacket off from around Aziraphale’s shoulders.

“Now get some sleep, okay, angel?” Crowley asked, taking half a step back.

Aziraphale’s hand flashed out and grabbed at his arm. The angel tried standing up, but only made it halfway before falling back onto the cushions, dragging Crowley with him. The angel looked terrified. “No—don’t—don’t leave me,” he begged.

Crowley’s mouth twisted. “You’re drunk, Zira,” he said. “You’ll be fine, I promise. I’m just going upstairs.”

“No, no—” Aziraphale’s grip on him tightened. “Please, I can’t—not again—need to stay awake—the dreams—”

Crowley frowned at him. “The nightmares, you mean?”

Aziraphale visibly shivered. “Stay,” he pleaded. “Don’t—don’t go. Need to know—know—you’re safe—”

Crowley felt something deep inside him twist painfully. Even if he was drunk and delirious and completely out of his mind, Aziraphale looked so very desperate and terrified. 

The demon let out a worried breath. “Fine, I’ll sleep down here. Happy?”

Aziraphale blinked at him.

“I’ll stay, I’m staying,” Crowley clarified. 

Aziraphale gasped out a relieved sob and allowed Crowley to push him gently back onto the sofa. “Now, go to sleep, please,” the demon urged. “I’ll be right here.”

Aziraphale gave a weary nod and began to sink back against the upholstery. His hand released its hold on Crowley and trailed away. 

“There,” Crowley said, and then muttered to himself, “that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

He turned to move away, but Aziraphale let out a squawk of protest as he walked out of the angel’s line of sight. “Comes—back—” Aziraphale mumbled.

Crowley sighed and turned back to the angel. He glanced down at the suit jacket draped over his arm and walked back to Aziraphale. “Here,” he said, throwing it gently over the angel’s shoulders like a blanket. “Does that help?”

Aziraphale blinked at him owlishly, a hand going to pull the jacket into a slightly more comfortable position. 

Crowley raised his eyebrows at the angel but then just sighed and walked over to the armchair Aziraphale liked reading in and dropped into it. 

He watched the angel for a little while, relieved as he soon began snoring. The demon stayed awake for a long time, keeping watch to make sure Aziraphale slept soundly. The clock on the wall read half past two by the time he finally allowed himself to close his own eyes and succumb to sleep.

 

~~***~~

 

It was nearing nine thirty by the time the sun finally found Crowley and startled him into wakefulness. As the demon raised a hand to drag it over his face, he registered that his head was throbbing slightly, and he wasted no time in wiping the hangover away with a wave of magic. He had to draw the line somewhere.

Crowley pushed himself up into more of a sitting position from where he’d fallen asleep slumped in Aziraphale’s armchair.

Aziraphale. Crowley’s eyes tracked over to the sofa, where the angel was still unconscious, Crowley’s suit jacket draped over him.

The demon stood and stretched like a cat, feeling his aching, cramped muscles protesting at the movement. Crowley started towards the kitchen and then doubled back and carefully tugged his suit jacket off the angel and shrugged it back onto his own shoulders. Aziraphale didn’t need to be getting any ideas.

Yawning, Crowley padded back into the kitchen and began quietly making toast. He might have attempted eggs, but wasn’t feeling too confident in his ability to render them edible without magic, and it just wouldn’t do for Aziraphale to get wind that the demon was also a horrendous cook. He would never hear the end of it.

Crowley was in the middle of searching for some butter or possibly jam in the refrigerator when there was a loud groan from the living room.

“Morning, angel,” he called, smirking as there was a follow-up groan. He located the jam and closed the fridge, squinting at the label. Apricot (ugh). He considered quietly miracling it into something more satisfying, like raspberry, but decided against it. 

“Want some toast, angel?” Crowley asked as he dug through the cutlery drawer for a knife.

“Just kill me now,” Aziraphale groaned from the other room.

“Yes, yes, but toast?” Crowley waited patiently, but there was no response apart from an exasperated moan. He put a second slice of bread in the toaster. “I’m making you toast,” he declared.

The demon was in the middle of slathering jam over his own piece when Aziraphale stumbled into the kitchen. His hair was sticking up in all directions and he looked rumpled and miserable.

“Would you like me to fix it?” Crowley asked brightly, finishing with the jam and sticking the knife back in the jar. Aziraphale stared at him blankly. 

“The hangover,” Crowley clarified, waggling his fingers at the angel in a decidedly occult manner.

Aziraphale gave him a strange look and shook his head. “No thanks. I’ll live.” He grimaced at some private pain. “Oh _Lord,_ I need a shower.”

Crowley shrugged. “Have it your way. You okay with apricot? No idea why you bought this…” he indicated the jam, “withered fruit mush.”

Aziraphale grunted something in assent and shuffled over to the cupboards, looking for a glass. He filled it with water from the tap and drank the whole thing straight down. He was working through his second glass when he paused, giving Crowley a strange look.

“Crowley, my dear…what happened last night?” he asked at length. “Why was I sleeping on the sofa?”

The toast chose that moment to pop up, and Crowley was grateful for the excuse to turn around and hide his expression. He gave as pleasant of a chuckle as he could manage. “What do you think?” he asked with a laugh, forcing his tone light and amused.

The demon grabbed the toast and, setting in on the counter, set about slathering it generously with jam. “We went to the pub, you had way too much of that vodka, and insisted on playing like twenty games of darts.”

“Darts?” Aziraphale sounded puzzled. “Oh dear, I don’t remember that at all.”

Crowley pivoted to face the angel, pushing the toast into his hands. “It’s probably best that you don’t,” he said frankly. “You didn’t win a single game. It was very embarrassing.”

Aziraphale coloured as he accepted the toast.

“And _then,”_ Crowley continued with his fabrication, turning back to wipe the toast crumbs off the counter, “by the time we got back, you were so out of it that it wasn’t worth attempting to _drag_ you up the stairs. Kept singing “God Save the Queen.” You’re lucky we don’t have neighbours. You’ve really gone native, you know. Above would be ashamed.”

“That bad, huh?” 

Crowley turned to see Aziraphale looking positively horrified, still holding the untouched toast.

“Hey, it was fun,” Crowley lied easily, moving closer and clapping the angel on the shoulder. “How about we stay off the hard stuff in the future, though? Don’t want Bert to throw us out, now do we?”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said, looking, if it were possible, even more embarrassed. “Bert.”

“Oh, he’s fine with it,” Crowley said quickly, making a mental note to ring the barman as soon as possible and let him in on the new sequence of events. “Besides, it wasn’t the worst thing you’ve ever done while drunk, not by a long shot, trust me.”

Now Aziraphale was back to looking at him with a horrified expression. “Like what?”

Crowley grinned. “Well,” he said, in the tone of voice of someone who’s just been asked about their favourite subject and is relishing the decision of where to start, “there was that time in Athens, and then Paris during the revolution, and that night in Boston—that was really something—oh! and Moscow back when—”

“Ugh, forget I asked,” the angel protested wearily. 

“Oh, but that was a good one!” Crowley said cheerily, remembering the incident fondly. It was one of the few times he’d managed to get the angel off his high horse and down to some proper mischief…the tsar’s hat would never be the same again…

“I told him it was all just a misunderstanding!” Aziraphale protested, evidently thinking along similar lines.

Crowley chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think there was much you could have done to make up for it, angel. He was going to hang you either way.”

“Yeah—oi! He _did_ hang me! Didn’t he? Wasn’t that the trip I got discorporated on?”

Crowley scratched his ear, thinking back. “No, I think that was later—”

_“No,_ it definitely was, because they printed a picture of that bloody hat on the broadsides for the execution,” Aziraphale said suddenly, pointing an accusatory finger at Crowley. “And _you kept one_.”

The demon grinned and shrugged. “It was a good picture. Memories, you know?”

“More like something to rub in my face for the next century,” Aziraphale huffed. “Raphael would have pitched a fit if she ever found out the truth. I told her I was killed helping plague victims.”

“Heh. I did keep that broadside, didn’t I?” Crowley reminisced. “Hey, whatever happened to that? Didn’t I—did I lose it?” He scratched his head. Unable to come up with anything, the demon shrugged and looked at Aziraphale, who had a distinctly guilty expression on his face. Crowley tilted his head. “You _didn’t—”_ he began.

“It may have got, er, thrown out with some of the rubbish…”

Crowley laughed aloud, paused, laughed again, and went over to give the angel a congratulatory pat on the shoulder. “Good job, angel. Quite the deception. Kept the secret for several hundred years. I’m proud of you.”

The angel blushed. “If they’d invented recycling yet—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’d have done your part for the planet,” the demon said, waving Aziraphale’s words away. “Anyway, the point is—you’ve done some really stupid stuff while drunk. Now eat your toast before it gets cold.”


	11. Of Birds and Books

Autumn gave way to winter, and soon the little cottage was blanketed in a thin layer of snow, frost spreading spiderweb patterns across the windowpanes.

Crowley’s vodka-related deception remained undiscovered, Bert corroborating the demon’s story and going as far as to assure Aziraphale that he had only lost at darts because Crowley had clearly been cheating. Meanwhile, Crowley convinced the angel to lay off the hard liquor for a while, and Bert continued greeting them at the pub with guesses about Aziraphale’s first name (Alexander? Aaron?).

Harper, the owner of the cafe, came over again to look at Aziraphale’s books, spending so much time geeking out with the angel over fifteenth-century bindings that Crowley felt the need to leave the house for several hours to escape the bibliophilic spirit.

Winter passed in a blur of Christmas ornaments and mistletoe. Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley showed any inclination in celebrating the holiday, though the angel did delight in the opportunity to improve his baking skills, churning out several dozen cookies a day. On the night of Christmas Eve, when everyone else in the little village was tucked away in their houses, extra cars in their drives and faces in the windows, Crowley and Aziraphale sat in their living room and worked their way through a bottle of excellent red wine the demon had had imported from the Continent. They reminisced on Christmases past, reliving their memories of many shared bottles of wine in various snug taverns and rented rooms, occasionally sprinkled with misadventures with wayward humans and agents from Above and Below. And of course there was the first Christmas—after a particularly wild night at a tavern in Bethlehem, the two of them had drunkenly made their way to the only inn they could find, and taken the last room. It had been quite a mystery to both of them why they had been assigned to that particular town on that particular night, and it had remained a mystery until the following morning, when half of Above had been patrolling the streets surrounding a certain manger. Smuggling Crowley out of the area had been quite a feat.

Aziraphale continued his strange birdwatching tendencies, not always finding time to watch but making sure there were always seeds in the bird feeder as winter waned and turned slowly to spring. Drizzling cold rains welcomed the first of Aziraphale’s tulips, which pushed up through the dark soil overnight, unfurling rich green leaves. Crowley offered his services to encourage the plants to grow even more verdantly, but Aziraphale turned him down point-blank and even warned him that if he so much as touched the garden there would be dire consequences.

The one damper on the whole thing was, of course, Father Gilbert, who showed up on their doorstep one afternoon, beaming and reciting Bible verses. Apparently Crowley hadn’t been clear enough the first time in telling him to stuff it, and closed the door rather rudely in the vicar’s face before he could get past, “Fear not, for I am with you.”

Annoying priests aside, Crowley found himself warming to the idea of life in Midfarthing. He had successfully rid himself of the millennia-long habit of miracling whatever he wanted into existence on a whim, and instead wrote things down or made a mental list so he could pick things up in the village or order them through one of the dozen catalogues always piling up near the door.

Despite what Aziraphale had let slip that vodka-influenced night, the angel seemed to be adapting just as well as Crowley was. Aziraphale had perfected many of the dishes he’d learned from the villagers over the winter, and Crowley even had a few favourites. The demon learned the postman’s name (Oscar El-Amin) and once found himself exchanging small talk with him about the state of the flower garden when Aziraphale was out.

And the angel was out more often than not these days. Between shopping, having tea with his newfound acquaintances, and working at the little corner shop, Crowley only saw Aziraphale when he was tending to the flowers, making dinner, or reading a book. Which left Crowley with an awful lot of free time. 

Some of it he tried to spend by tagging after the angel, but there was only so much tea and polite conversation the demon could stomach. Many of the people Aziraphale visited were really quite likable—hatefully pleasant, yes, but with a good sense of humour or at least a philanthropic heart when it came to biscuits and sweets. But Crowley, demonic nature aside, had never been one for small talk for the sake of small talk. 

So he’d tried tagging along on shopping trips instead. He still did this from time to time, sometimes just going by himself to restock on food if the angel was busy or if he was feeling particularly antsy to get out of the cottage, but the initial trips had been…interesting. Aziraphale of course had a lengthy list that included things like frozen chicken, leeks, and some fancy type of cheese. Crowley, on the other hand, strolled down the snacks and sweets aisles, grabbing anything with an appealing mixture of ice cream and chocolate or salt and spices. Aziraphale raised one eyebrow in silent judgement and proceeded to apologise to the young woman checking them out for the juvenile appetites of the demon.

The appeal of the unhealthy diet had eventually worn off, though not because it was having a negative affect on the demon’s figure. In fact, Crowley reckoned he might have even lost a little weight. Aziraphale, meanwhile, glowered at him while working his way through salad after salad. It was one of the perks of being immortal: you didn’t have to worry about counting carbs. But eventually the sugar and salt became too much, and Crowley found he could enjoy a well-cooked piece of fish just as much.

For a while the demon had even tagged after Aziraphale to his work at the corner shop. Mostly this happened when the angel had left for work and Crowley found himself bored with nothing to do. He sometimes attempted to find something to amuse himself with at the cottage, but he usually gave up and went for a walk instead. He still kept regular patrols of the village's perimeter, though nothing ever stirred in the ether. After a while they ceased to feel like patrols in his mind, and only as rather relaxing walks, though he did keep a weather eye on the horizon. 

But his walk would unerringly bring him back into the village, and past the little corner shop. At which point he would saunter in, under the pretext of buying a flyswatter or a mint. Aziraphale usually gave him a bright smile when he entered, though he had yet to decide if this was because the angel was pleased to see him or if he was just obligated to smile at all prospective customers. Sometimes Aziraphale was sitting behind the counter and reading a book, and other times he would be stocking shelves, dusting off merchandise, or counting the remaining items for inventory cross-checking. They would sit and chat for a while, or else Crowley might help with the angel’s tasks. Aziraphale always thanked him when he did so, though he eventually pointed out that the demon might just want to get a job himself.

Crowley had first dismissed this idea—what kind of a job was there in a place like this for someone like him?—but Aziraphale did have a point. He had no new leads on how to unFall the angel, and though he was still very determined to do so, he was at a momentary impasse. Besides, barring accidents, Aziraphale had enough life in him left for forty years. It was turning out that forty years was a long time after all—it had only been a matter of months and already it seemed like they’d been in Midfarthing for decades. 

It probably didn’t help that they never left the confines of the shield Adam had placed over the village, which in some ways made it feel like the rest of the world didn’t even exist. London, India, America: they were all so very far away, so distant as to seem meaningless. Though Crowley’s grasp of international politics and economics was impressive, with nothing to feed his interest, he felt it wane inside of him. Instead, Aziraphale taught him how to bake cakes and, once, even walked him through how to tell if a rare book was authentic. 

It was nothing like the way he’d lived his life for the last six millennia, but in this case different didn’t necessarily mean unpleasant.

It was idyllic, in a way. With neither Above nor Below to pressure them into fulfilling their God-given tasks, the angel and demon could finally drop the pretenses of their positions. Though Aziraphale was still a far nicer person than most Crowley had met, the demon hadn’t seen him so much as rescue a cat from a tree in weeks. And Crowley—well, the most demonic thing he’d done in days was rearrange a bunch of price tags in the grocer's. Low-level evil, sure, enough to keep him from going too soft—but nothing like what he’d been up to in the past. With no Below breathing down his neck, and no Above on Aziraphale’s case…

It was an odd sort of freedom.

So one day after one of his walks, Crowley strolled right past the little corner shop and strode instead into the newly-refurbished office of Walter Jamieson, Midfarthing’s token banker. Crowley introduced himself, demanded to see Mr Jamieson in person, delivered a stirring lecture on improper business practises to the perplexed banker, and walked him through six highly illegal ways he could increase his profits. He was hired on the spot.

Life on the job wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but it was better than shadowing Aziraphale all day or sitting around in the cottage wondering for the hundredth time how to unFall the angel. He spent most of his time reading over the bank’s contracts, adding subtle but incredibly important words here and there and laying out a watertight legal defence in case an unhappy client tried to take them to court. His cunning additions to the bank’s marketing strategy made the loans appear very attractive, and soon new customers were rolling in from nearby villages and larger population centres nearby. Mr Jamieson called him a snake oil salesman (not unkindly). Crowley said he’d worked in PR. He was given a raise in his first week.

They hardly needed the extra money; Crowley had miracled up a respectable sum for himself and Aziraphale when they'd moved in and squirreled it away in a _reputable_ bank. But it did help them build a more plausible story and provided an obvious source of income. Though it was conceivable to the villagers that Aziraphale had spent his younger years working in some hot-shot job in London and then retired early to the countryside, Crowley appeared to be solidly in his thirties. Sometimes people asked questions, and it was better to blend in the best they could, lest word of mouth about them spread too far and attract unwanted attention. It was impossible to know how much Above and Below wanted them, and impossible to know how long they would search. Crowley doubted Below was terribly interested in his whereabouts anymore; they might even have assumed he was killed in action. Above, on the other hand…Aziraphale’s assessment of the situation was the best he had, in which case they might search for years. Decades, even. Centuries.

But neither Aziraphale’s bibliophilic tendencies nor Crowley’s cunning financial schemes ever drew more than the attention of a passing rainstorm to the little village.

The pendulum on the old clock continued swinging back and forth, broke and stopped, got fixed, and went on thrumming to and fro. Spring warmed to summer and cooled to autumn, and Aziraphale planted crocuses together with the tulips.

Crowley took up long-distance stock market trading for a while, but the hobby soon bored him and he went back to making rude comments to the local priest. Infuriatingly, Father Gilbert seemed to have taken the attitude that this was just the demon’s way of being friendly, as he kept inviting him and Aziraphale on fishing trips.

Bert ran low on names starting with ‘A’ and started quizzing the angel on increasingly foreign names, including several in Cyrillic.

That spring, the birds returned to the village in full force, and more than ever set about perching on Aziraphale’s little bird feeder, pecking at the scattering of seeds placed for them there. The angel liked to sit outside in front of the flower garden when it was nice out, watching them soar back and forth and call to each other. Part of Crowley wanted very much to crack some sort of cheap joke at the expense of the hobby, but whenever he opened his mouth to do so, it died in his throat. He had rarely seen the angel so peaceful.

He was therefore very surprised when he came back from the bank one day to see Aziraphale standing on the lawn, violently tugging at the post that held the bird feeder. A dozen birds were swooping and diving around him, calling shrilly.

“Zira,” Crowley said, more out of shock than anything.

Aziraphale glanced over his shoulder at the demon just as the post came free of the earth. The angel looked distraught and angry, cheeks flushed and stance tense. He turned back to the bird feeder as Crowley hurried up the drive. 

Aziraphale’s grip on the stake tightened as he violently dragged it further out of the ground, trailing clumps of soil after it. One of the birds dove closer around him, and abruptly Aziraphale turned and yelled at it wordlessly, jabbing at the offending bird wildly with the uprooted feeder. He was far too slow and the birds only called louder as they swirled around him in a cyclone of flapping wings.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted as he neared, trying to be heard over the bird calls.

“No, no, just  _no!”_ Aziraphale shouted, voice escalating. Crowley wasn’t sure if he was talking to him or the birds; he was still swinging the bird feeder and stake around like an axe, scattering the birds, who abruptly rose as one and funneled upwards. “Go! Just bloody _go already!”_ the angel shouted after them as they swirled into the sky in a flurry of wings and feathers.

When they were gone, Aziraphale brought the swinging bird feeder to a stop, breathing heavily. Crowley stayed where he had stopped, safely out of range of the crude weapon. Aziraphale stood still for a moment, looked at the ground, and started shaking.

Crowley, perplexed, took a step towards him. “Zira—” he began cautiously, raising his hands in a calming motion.

The angel looked up at him sharply, and Crowley read anger, frustration, and something like pain in his eyes before he abruptly turned away. Redoubling his grip on the bird feeder stake, Aziraphale half-marched, half-ran across the lawn and vanished around the corner of the cottage.

Crowley stared after him. The demon was starting forward, intent on following the angel, when he heard a faint, high-pitched screech. The demon paused and looked over his shoulder, trying to determine where the noise had come from again. The faint cry came again a moment later—a sort of trembling squawk. It was coming from the direction of the cottage.

Crowley redirected his feet and started towards the little stone building, where the front door was thrown wide open. He stepped inside uncertainly and heard the cry again, even fainter this time. It was accompanied by a faint scuffling sound.

The demon was on guard immediately, looking around automatically for a weapon. Aziraphale had clearly seen something that had distressed him greatly. Crowley moved cautiously through the living room, and had only gone a couple of feet when he realised what the source of the noise was.

Something small and dark was twitching on the hearth of the fireplace. Crowley moved towards it, noting as he did so the leather-bound book lying facedown on the floor and the curls of smoke still rolling out of the fireplace, which had evidently been recently extinguished. 

Crowley moved past the book and crouched on the floor next to the hearth, letting out a long breath. “Oh, Zira,” he said softly.

Lying on the hearth, squawking and thrashing around weakly, was a blackbird. It was fully grown, with a wingspan of a little over a foot. Or, at least, it would have had a wingspan of that size. The bird was dusted from beak to claw in dark soot and dotted with gleaming red embers. It looked like the poor creature had flown down the chimney and been trapped for some time before managing to fall out onto the hearth. 

Crowley could picture the scene: Aziraphale sitting in his chair, peacefully reading one of his books, when there was a sudden bout of screeching and banging. Then the unfortunate bird must have rolled out of the flames of the lit fireplace onto the hearth, still trying to escape. Aziraphale must have tried to save the bird—he had abandoned his book and extinguished the fire—but then realised something else about the ill-fated blackbird.

Sometime during the bird’s tumble down the chimney, it must have brushed its primaries too closely to the flames. Looking at the wretched thing now, Crowley could understand why Aziraphale had reacted as he had; the blackbird’s wings were almost completely burned off. Only a couple mangled feathers were left on the charred, skeletal bones. The bird was still fighting for life, ruined wings flapping feebly as it struggled to lift itself onto its feet, crying weakly. 

Crowley looked down at the bird and felt a very undemonic rush of compassion come over him. He reached forward, already funneling enough magic for a minor miracle into his fingertips. As he neared the bird, though, it turned its soot-smeared head towards him. It regarded him calmly for a long second with a single yellow-ringed eye. Crowley hesitated, fingers only centimetres away.

Then the bird tried feebly to flap one more time, laid its head down on the hearth, and grew still. 

Crowley stared at it in horror, healing fingertips all but brushing the scorched feathers. After a long moment, he swallowed and retracted his hand.

It was very quiet. The only sound was the steady thrumming of the pendulum clock on the wall. Crowley slowly reached out and gathered the broken, singed bird into his hands. He stood and walked back outside. Aziraphale was nowhere to be seen, but there was a sizable dark hole in the ground where the angel had forcibly ripped up the bird feeder.

Crowley walked carefully over to where the angel’s tulips were starting to bud, crocuses sprouting up between them. The demon knelt, laid the blackbird on the grass next to him, and miracled a trowel into his hand, using it to gently outline a circle in the soft earth. Doing his best to keep the roots of Aziraphale’s carefully-tended plants unharmed, he scooped out a whole swath of flowers and the earth surrounding their roots, using a healthy dose of magic to keep the unit intact. He then redoubled his grip on the trowel and started digging straight down, heaping the earth onto the lawn. 

When he was over a foot down, he set the trowel aside and carefully reached for where the singed remains of the unfortunate blackbird lay on the grass next to him. Folding the remains of the bird’s wings around its body, Crowley laid it gently at the bottom of the hole he had dug in the soft earth. He paused for a moment, looking down at the poor creature’s scorched body. He shivered a little and started scooping soil back into the hole, telling himself there was no significance in the similarities between the blackbird and Aziraphale. 

None at all.

When Crowley had finished filling in the hole, he carefully replaced the bundle of topsoil, roots, and flowers he had removed. He miracled the trowel back out of existence and tapped a little magic into the grass, cleaning it of the scattered crumbles of dark earth and smoothing out the flowerbed he had disturbed. It was like nothing had been touched.

Crowley stood up and looked down at the innocuous little flower bed for a moment. Then he shook off the strange melancholy that had come over him and walked back inside. He dusted off the hearth, made sure the fire was properly extinguished, and retrieved Aziraphale’s book from the floor, closing it and placing it on the seat of the angel’s armchair.

He stood uncertainly in the living room for a time, looking out the still-open front door. Aziraphale had not returned.

Crowley debated for a long minute and then turned back towards the kitchen. It was nearing dinnertime. He scouted through the cabinets and found enough ingredients for a three-cheese and broccoli pasta dish Aziraphale liked a lot.

He had set the table and was almost done making the pasta, beginning to wonder anxiously if the angel was going to come back, when there was a sound from the direction of the front door.

Crowley stuck his head out of the kitchen and was relieved to see Aziraphale standing uncertainly in the doorway. The demon quickly reached over to turn the heat on the pasta down and stepped back out into the living room.

“Hey, angel,” he said, trying for casual but not too cheerful. 

Aziraphale started, looking over at him. Crowley realised that he’d been staring towards the fireplace, the corner of the sofa blocking his view from where he was hovering by the front door. The angel licked his lips uncertainly. “Hello, my dear,” he said, and his voice sounded too quiet in the silence, smaller than it usually was.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Crowley said, for lack of anything else. 

Aziraphale nodded absently, eyes going again to where he couldn’t quite see the fireplace, and didn’t move.

“I took care of everything,” Crowley said, sensing what the problem was. “It’s okay now.”

Aziraphale nodded slowly, looking back over at Crowley, locking eyes with him this time. The angel took several steps towards him, and made it halfway to the kitchen before he had to pause and cast a sideways glance at the fireplace. A look of sad relief crossed over his face as he saw the hearth was empty.

Crowley felt his mouth twist into a worried shape as he ducked back into the kitchen. He turned the pasta back up and began adding the proper spices, flipping some of the stalks of broccoli over with the wooden spoon to make sure they were cooking evenly. 

After a moment he registered that Aziraphale was hovering at the door to the kitchen. Crowley glanced at him, noting the haunted look in the angel's eyes. “You doing okay?” he asked.

Aziraphale gave a small sniff. “Yeah,” he said, in that same quiet voice. “Sorry about earlier,” he continued, in a slightly stronger tone. “I wasn’t…I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“It’s okay,” Crowley said, poking at a noodle with the tip of the spoon but not really seeing it. 

There was a long uncertain silence in which both of them just stared down at the quietly sizzling pasta, Crowley continuing to prod bits of it without really paying attention.

“That’s not going to happen to you, Zira,” Crowley said at last, keeping his eyes locked on a piece of broccoli. “I’m going to find a way to unFall you.” 

“I know,” Aziraphale said after a moment. “I know.”

Crowley nodded and after a moment shifted abruptly into a more brusque mode, pulling the pasta off the heat and flipping the hob off. “Would you mind grabbing us something to drink, angel? Thanks,” he said, maneuvering past Aziraphale with the hot pan.

He could feel the angel’s eyes on him the whole way out of the kitchen, but when he turned back all he could see in Aziraphale’s level gaze was gratitude, fondness, and a hint of something sadder.

 

~~***~~

 

 

Spring gave way to summer, autumn took up the reins next, followed by a brief stint of winter carrying the torch, and before Crowley knew it it was spring again. The birds continued to visit the cottage for months, but they soon seemed to recognise that the source of free food was no longer available, and kept on their way. Aziraphale never birdwatched again. Crowley installed a mesh screen on the top of the chimney, just in case, and another one around the hearth.

The angel spent more time reading—or, at least, he did until Crowley caught him leaning so close to a book that his nose was almost brushing the pages.

“Er, what are you doing?” the demon asked, rocking to a halt near the pendulum clock.

Aziraphale snapped his head up and blushed. “Nothing,” he responded in a tone that did nothing to prove his innocence.

Crowley forced down a chuckle. “Looking for hidden messages?” he joked. “Maybe if the dot on the _i_ is really more of a square than a circle, it means Mission Bibliophile is a-go.” On a slightly more serious note, he added, “Try a magnifying glass.”

Aziraphale blushed again, and Crowley gave him a strange look but left it at that.

After the peculiar exchange, Aziraphale spent more time than usual weeding the garden, which Crowley attributed more to the season than to anything being wrong.

Later that week, though, Crowley walked into the living room to find Aziraphale anxiously shuffling what looked like a deck of index cards.

The angel looked up when Crowley entered. “Oh, my dear, would you help me with something?”

Crowley shrugged and walked over. “Sure. What is it?”

“Could you hold this?” The angel proffered the stack of index cards. Crowley accepted them and glanced through the pile; each held nothing but a single short, simple word written in black sharpie in Aziraphale’s neat copperplate handwriting. The words were several inches tall and each took up the entirety of the card. Crowley looked at the angel askance.

“Stand over there,” Aziraphale directed, indicating the far side of the room. Crowley raised an eyebrow but did as he was bid. “Now go through the cards and pick one at random and hold it in front of the others, so I can see it.”

Crowley, feeling rather like he was part of some bizarre experiment, flipped through the stack and pulled out one at random. It read _WIND_ in all caps. Shrugging to himself, the demon held the card in front of himself, facing Aziraphale.

The angel looked at it. 

“Okay,” Aziraphale said after a moment, making a mark on a sheet of paper near his elbow. “Now take a step towards me and pick a different card.”

“What’s all this about?” Crowley asked as he stepped forward and selected a new card.

“I’ll tell you in a mo,” Aziraphale said, squinting at the card in the demon’s hand. “Okay, now another step and another card.”

They did this for some dozen steps, until Crowley was only a metre away.

“Okay, thanks,” Aziraphale said, reaching out to take the cards from Crowley.

The demon tilted his head curiously as he handed them over, peering down at the sheet Aziraphale had been writing on. It held two crooked lists of numbers. “So what’s up?”

Aziraphale sighed and looked down at the cards in his hands, shuffling them uneasily. He pulled one out and turned it to face Crowley. “What does this say?” he asked.

Crowley glanced at it. “Fish.”

Aziraphale turned it around to face himself. He looked down at it and sighed again. He looked a little worried.

“Zira, what’s the matter?”

Aziraphale kept his eyes fixed on the card. “I think I’m losing my vision.”

Crowley blinked at him. “What?”

The angel looked up at him. “Nothing major,” he said quickly, “But I can’t see things up close anymore. This card,” he gestured at the card in his hand, the one that said _FISH_ , “I can’t read it. Not up close, anyway. It’s all just sort of a blur. I can tell it’s writing, and I can tell it’s my handwriting, but I can’t read it. I was taking notes—” he gestured to the piece of paper at his elbow, “trying to figure out exactly where it falls off. Not that I can read anything within a metre of my face as it is.” The angel’s mouth twitched up into an ironic smile. “It’s been happening little by little for the last year, I think. I didn’t notice at first, but I can’t really read anymore—the words are just too small.”

Crowley stared at him. “So you’re…what? Far-sighted?” In six thousand years of corporations, he had never once had anything less than perfect 20/20 vision. That, however, was due to a strange quirk about the relationship between angels and demons and their corporations. Someone had written once that the eyes were the windows to the soul, and that was especially true among supernatural beings both diabolical and divine. In every corporation, Aziraphale had never had eyes any other colour than that startling icy blue, and Crowley had always possessed the yellow eyes of a serpent. For the angel’s eyesight to fail now…it was a distinctly human problem.

“Not technically,” Aziraphale said. “Far-sightedness is caused by the eyeball being slightly the wrong shape. No, apparently this happens to a lot of people—I was talking to Bert about it.” Aziraphale fixed him with a level stare, and Crowley found himself wondering if he could only do so because the demon was standing several metres away. The angel gave him a small smile. “Apparently I’m getting quite on in years.”

Crowley continued staring at him wordlessly.

“Old age, Crowley. Humans lose the ability to focus on things up close in old age. Apparently I need glasses.”

Something was beginning to occur to Crowley. He closed the distance between them and laid a hand on the angel’s shoulder.

“I don’t think that will work, my dear,” Aziraphale said even as Crowley funneled magic into the angel, focussing it particularly around Aziraphale’s eyes.

When he stepped back, Aziraphale blinked up at him several times. Then the angel shook his head. “Nothing.”

Crowley frowned down at him.

“You can’t cure old age, my dear,” Aziraphale explained patiently. “If I had been struck blind, or caught an infection or something, sure—but you can’t cure what’s natural.”

Crowley mumbled something to himself and stepped back, at a loss. “So…now what?” There was a little voice in the back of his head telling him that this was the beginning of the end.

Aziraphale shrugged. “Call an optometrist, I suppose. Apparently this is one of those little nuisances humans have solved quite economically. I’ll get some glasses and I’ll be fine.”

Crowley nodded wordlessly and then abruptly realised Aziraphale might not be able to see him. “Okay,” he said quickly.

Aziraphale smirked at him. “I can still _see_ you, you know,” he said. “I’m not _that_ blind.”

Crowley felt himself colour inexplicably. 

“Could you be a dear, though, and look in the phonebook for an optometrist who’ll make a house call? Tell him I’m agoraphobic but very wealthy; should do the trick.”

Aziraphale’s shiny new glasses arrived less than two weeks later. They were more like spectacles than anything else, and were to be used for reading and looking at things under a metre and a half away. The optometrist had declared the angel to still have excellent long-distance vision, and explained that practically everyone needed glasses as they aged. He had offered to look over Crowley’s eyes as well, while he was here, but the demon declined, resisting the temptation to sneak the doctor a look over the top of his sunglasses, which he had worn just for the occasion (he'd made a habit of using a small spell that acted as a sort of mirage and rendered his eyes human in appearance, though Aziraphale had convinced him to drop the spell when it was just the two of them).

At first Aziraphale approached the glasses with nothing less than guarded suspicion, which was mildly surprising seeing as it had been his idea in the first place. But once he settled the spectacles on his nose, he gave a broad smile and immediately started looking around at everything in extreme detail, starting with the grain of the nearby table.

“Wow, I lost a _lot,”_ Aziraphale said in mild wonder, fingers tracing over the surface. “There’s so much… _detail.”_ Then the angel’s head snapped up and he started walking around, inspecting every part of the living room with great interest. Crowley watched in amusement as Aziraphale reached the bookshelf, pulled a volume off at random, and opened it. The angel looked to be almost glowing with delight as he scanned down the page, lifting and lowering his glasses to get the comparison.

Crowley found himself grinning as well as he leaned casually against the doorframe to the kitchen. Aziraphale was flipping to the next page when a chirp of ringing emanated from the demon’s hip.

Crowley jumped a little and fished his mobile out of his pocket. It was very sleek and had been the cutting edge of modern technology when he'd bought it several years ago.

The demon looked down at the device as it buzzed, frowning. This was his personal _personal_ mobile, and only a handful of people on the planet knew the number, chief among them the angel currently examining the binding of a leather-bound book not four metres in front of him.

Crowley frowned and flipped the cover up, raising the mobile to his ear as he turned and walked into the kitchen. “Hello?” he said guardedly.

“Crowley?” It was a woman’s voice.

The demon frowned, trying to place the speaker. “Yes, who—”

“It’s Anathema. I was going through Agnes’ book, and I think I found something.”


	12. The Nice and Accurate Prophecies

Crowley felt his grip on the mobile tighten. “Like what? _Exactly?_ Actually, hang on, let me get a pen.”

“Newt and I think it has something to do with you two,” Anathema said as Crowley hurried back into the living room, waving his hand to get Aziraphale’s attention. He mimed writing in the air and pointed urgently to the mobile. The angel frowned, nodded, set down the book he’d been looking at, and started rummaging among the pile of papers on the table for a fresh sheet and a pen.  “You’re not mentioned by name but I don’t know what else it could mean. Though it might be going on about things that will happen in a hundred years’ time; we just don’t know,” Anathema continued. “And it’s only four lines.”

“That’s fine, just tell us what you’ve got and we’ll look over it,” Crowley said, taking the pen and paper Aziraphale handed him and spreading the latter out on the table. He switched the mobile to his other ear and tilted his head, holding the device with his shoulder. “Shoot.”

“A mortale soule in radiaent splendour Felle,” Anathema read, “And shalle returneth to its starte. Fore to reverse the Acte of Falling, One needes feele but true remorse.” Crowley, scrawling all this down on the sheet of paper, felt the tip of his pen freeze on the very last _e._

“Newt and I were thinking—if Aziraphale’s human now, he’d be mortal, right? So he might be the ‘mortale soule.’”

“Yeah,” Crowley said without really listening, staring down at the four short lines of ink. Aziraphale was reading them over his shoulder, and had gone very still. “No,” he corrected himself a moment later, registering what Anathema had said. “Well, maybe,” he conceded a heartbeat after. “But that’s not how it works. Humans don’t have mortal souls. They have mortal lives. There’s a difference. Angels have mortal souls, and immortal lives. That’s why if you kill an angel or demon—do it properly—they just…die…” Crowley trailed off, back to staring at his own sloppy handwriting. “Hang on, Agnes wrote in Old English, right?”

“Yeah,” Anathema said. “Do you want the exact spellings?”

“Please.” Crowley reached to adjust his grip on the mobile jammed between his ear and shoulder, and Aziraphale grabbed it, craning his head closer and holding it so that both of them could hear.

“First line…” Anathema began, and repeated the four lines, this time spelling everything out and having Crowley repeat it back to her with the occasional muttered correction by Aziraphale until they were certain they had it right. 

“Thanks so much,” Crowley said once they had finished, taking the mobile back from Aziraphale and leaving the angel to stare down at the paper alone. “Let us know if you find anything else.”

“There's one more thing,” Anathema said. “It’s the line right after these. I can’t tell if it goes with this section or if it's the first line of the next one; the rhythm of the lines and formatting is all the same.”

“What is it?” Crowley asked.

There was a short silence before Anathema responded. “Again, I’m not sure,” she said, “but it says ‘Deathe cometh amongst the lilies’ bloom.’”

Crowley was silent. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said at last. “Thanks again. Give Newt our regards.”

“Will do,” she said. “How are you two doing over there?”

Crowley glanced over at Aziraphale, who was squinting at the paper and turning it upside down and sideways, apparently looking for any type of hidden code. He felt the corner of his mouth twitch up. “Just fine,” he said, and was rather surprised to find that it was true.

“Let us know if you need anything,” she said.

“Sure,” Crowley replied. “Thanks again. Bye.”

The demon hung up, mind still lingering on the aftertaste of ‘Deathe cometh amongst the lilies’ bloom.’

“This is great news,” Crowley declared, pushing aside his lingering doubt. He strode back over to Aziraphale’s side, looking down at the little square of text, each letter carefully rendered. “‘A mortal soul in radiant splendour Fell, and shall return to its start,’” Crowley read. “Well, that’s you, obviously. Don’t know if I’d call your wings burning ‘radiant splendour,’ but that’s creative licence for you. And then, _right here_ —” Crowley felt his voice jump up a notch in his excitement, “—‘For to reverse the act of Falling, one needs feel but true remorse.’ _That’s_ how you unFall. Feel true remorse.” Crowley beamed at the angel. “It’s easy! You just have to feel sorry about it.”

Aziraphale gave him a strange look and Crowley abruptly realised that the angel wasn’t nearly as excited about this as he was.

“Oh, come on, what’s the matter?” Crowley asked, feeling some of his excitement deflate. “I thought you wanted to unFall?”

Aziraphale frowned, raising a hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “I do,” he said, but his voice was not as certain as Crowley would have liked. “It’s just…” the angel trailed off.

“What?” Crowley pressed. “It would fix your eyes.” He gestured at Aziraphale’s spectacles. “You’d be immortal again. You could work miracles. You’d have your wings back.”

A longing came over Aziraphale’s face, filled with a fragile hope. 

“Just a bit of remorse,” Crowley said. “It’s not like it’s asking you to kill somebody.”

Aziraphale’s face abruptly closed down, and the angel took a hesitant half-step backwards. “I’m not sure—” he began. “Maybe it means something else.”

Crowley looked down at the lines and back at Aziraphale. It seemed crystal clear to him. “Well, we’ll try remorse first. Apologise, maybe?” He looked at the angel expectantly.

Aziraphale saw his look and gave a short laugh. “You’re not going to unFall me in a day, my dear,” he said, though his voice was tense. “You remember what I did to Fall. I _killed_ —” Aziraphale broke off. “It was a lot, Crowley,” he settled on instead. “And on top of that, I broke about every rule in the book. I rescued a prisoner—” here he gestured at Crowley, “—one of the _Adversary,_ at that—that was _big,_ Crowley. I don’t think _apologising_ is going to help.”

Crowley frowned at him, but the angel had a point. “Well, then, what do you think you’d have to do?” 

“At a guess,” Aziraphale began slowly. He looked up at Crowley, expression pained. “Turn you back in, for a start.”

Crowley opened his mouth and froze as his mind suddenly jumped gears and went into overdrive. For a moment he was back in that hateful room in Heaven, pinned against the wall, wings trembling, heart hammering, breath hitching as he sobbed tearlessly, desperately praying for even the mercy of death.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and Aziraphale’s voice said, “But that’s not going to happen.”

Crowley swallowed and looked up at the angel, shaking himself from the sudden surge of panic. There was a haunted look in Aziraphale’s eyes, and he knew the angel meant what he said. 

“Okay,” Crowley said shakily. “Maybe…maybe it doesn’t need to be something that big.” His voice took on a hopeful note. “I mean, you can’t just reverse everything you did—you can’t bring back the angels you killed. Maybe you just have to _regret_ the things you did.”

Aziraphale frowned next to him, looking very sober. “I don’t know if this ‘true remorse’ thing is going to work out,” he said after a moment.

Crowley glanced at him sharply. “You’ve got to at least _try—”_

“Crowley,” Aziraphale cut him off. “It’s not going to work, because I could never regret saving you.”

 

~~***~~

 

The days slipped by into weeks, and still Crowley was no closer to unFalling Aziraphale. Clearly the angel wasn’t going to be approachable on the ‘true remorse’ front for a while, and frankly Crowley wasn’t sure if he would ever be. 

He let it drop. Besides, he reasoned, if Agnes had written that Aziraphale would unFall, then he would; it was just a matter of time. 

So Crowley continued going to work at the bank, and Aziraphale kept going to the little corner shop, and the weeks stretched into months that stretched into years. 

Aziraphale switched out the flowers in the front of the cottage to hyacinths and then to lavender and back to tulips. It rained more often than it didn’t, and still no signs of Above or Below appeared around the edges of Adam’s spell.

Humanity settled over the angel and demon like a cloak. Crowley all but forgot he was a demon some days, so absorbed in going to work, picking up groceries, and making dinner. Sometimes his thoughts never wandered outside of the village or the events of the last month. He became completely dependent on regular amounts of food and sleep, something that made it easier to live with Aziraphale but was also terribly bothersome at times, though it was nice being able to fall asleep so quickly. As time passed, he found himself missing the Bentley and his old flat less and less, and instead found himself invited over to Bert’s house, and even ended up sitting on Donnie’s sofa with a cup of tea in his hand and Aziraphale by his side more than once. His habit of teasing the employees at the grocer's waned, and he rarely ever swapped out the price tags anymore, though he knew they still checked every couple of days out of paranoia.

Aziraphale perfected cooking and was soon fabricating complex cakes and dishes of chicken and funny-tasting sauces with distinctly French names. He never returned to his habit of birdwatching, instead spending more time reading, landscaping, and even trying oil painting for a time, though the hobby stunk so badly Crowley decreed that he had to do it outside. The angel also took up knitting, learning it from some of the members of the local quilting club. Crowley laughed when he first saw Aziraphale attempting to produce what was probably supposed to be a scarf but looked more like an extremely disheveled snakeskin. Then he laughed a second time, because it was such an _Aziraphale_ thing to do. The angel had soon produced a number of misshapen hats and taken a good stab at a jumper, which he wore proudly even when Crowley sniggered behind his back. It was much to Aziraphale’s credit that he still knit the demon a long, lovely tartan scarf from an elaborate pattern, even though Crowley swore up and down that it would never touch his neck.

Time left its mark on Aziraphale. The angel started complaining of aching joints and occasional sorenesses, things Crowley was able to only partially alleviate with a well-placed dosage of magic. Aziraphale had been right when he’d said that there was no cure for old age. But where time left its mark in the lines on the angel’s face and the greying streaks in his hair, it left Crowley untouched. The demon appeared just as youthful as he always had, something he began to wonder might appear strange to the villagers. His face did line slightly, but it was only with the lines he put there: more smile lines, and crinkles around the corners of his eyes. It was an unusual feeling.

They went through seven excellent bottles of wine over seven Christmases, sitting side-by-side on the sofa together and laughing over some story about ancient Mesopotamia or something they’d overheard at the pub. There was snow on the ground for only three of the Christmases, but during the most recent there had been a small blizzard. The two of them had got quite lost in the whiteness on their way back from a late Christmas lunch at Mendellson’s, where a quarter of the village seemed to have packed in for what was allegedly some of the best roasted goose in the county. The meal had been more of a cheerful party, and succeeded in being quite entertaining despite Aziraphale both forgetting Harper’s name and spilling his half-finished hot cocoa all over the booth. 

Aziraphale succeeded in buying more books than they had room for, and soon volumes were lying sideways on the shelves above shorter ones, any which way they fit. The angel bought another bookcase but that one soon filled up as well, and before long there were piles of books lying stacked up in every corner of the little cottage.

Aziraphale had also adopted the habit of mislaying his spectacles, something that amused the demon to no end. Whenever Aziraphale asked him if he’d seen them around, Crowley responded by asking him cheekily how he expected to find them if he couldn’t see them, before actually applying himself to the search.

When Aziraphale came back in from collecting the post one morning with four large, distinctly book-shaped packages in his arms, Crowley all but groaned, craning his head around from where he was reclined on the sofa, awkwardly eating a piece of toast (he’d finally convinced the angel to buy raspberry jam). “No more!” he lamented loudly. “We’ll be up to our ears before we know it!”

“Afraid so, my dear,” Aziraphale said calmly, setting the packages down on the table with a slight _schwoomph._

“Anything interesting?” Crowley asked, taking a crunchy bite of his toast.

“Hmm?”

“The post,” the demon managed around his mouthful of delicious raspberry-jam-flavoured burnt bread crumbles. “Anything interesting?”

There was a long pause, and the sound of the angel paging through the envelopes. “Er.”

“Well, what’s that supposed to mean?” Crowley asked with a little laugh, propping himself up further on the sofa to better eat his toast. 

“Bunch of bills,” the angel said vaguely. 

“Real specific,” Crowley said, standing up and walking around to the table, plucking the bundle from Aziraphale’s hand. He flicked one piece of post down onto the table after the other, holding his piece of toast delicately with the other. The first two pieces were indeed bills, but the third was a postcard, image side down. 

“Now, what’s this?” Crowley said, setting down the rest of the pile. He flipped it over. The image was of a bookshelf filled with thick, leather-bound books chained to their shelves. The words ‘Bodleian Library’ were in the corner in a professional white sans serif typeface. The demon flipped it back over and scanned the scrawled message.

“Hey, angel, it’s from Harper. He went on a trip to Oxford, remember?” Crowley flipped the card over again and laughed. “Look, now you’re getting _pictures_ of books as well as actual books.”

Aziraphale took the postcard, squinting at it from behind his spectacles. “Fancy that,” he said. 

“Just a bunch of bills,” Crowley scoffed affably. “Nothing sneaks past the Guardian of the Eastern Gate!”

Aziraphale grumbled something incomprehensible, slapped Crowley good-naturedly on the arm, and started inspecting his first package. 

Crowley rubbed his arm in an overly offended manner but felt himself grinning anyway. “Well, don’t feel bad, I got past you too,” he added cheerily before wandering into the kitchen. “Want some breakfast, angel?”

“Sure; I’ll put the tea on in just a mo,” Aziraphale said, still immersed in examining his latest package.

Crowley yawned as he made his way into the kitchen. Despite the demon's protests that everyone in this day and age used an electric kettle, Aziraphale had stubbornly insisted on an ancient version for the hob, declaring that the modern ones rendered the tea inferior.  The demon's hand was halfway to said kettle before he registered that it was already on the hob. He plucked the lid off and glanced inside. “You already started the tea,” Crowley called back to the angel. He chuckled to himself. “Do you want me to start it again, or were you just going to keep all that water for yourself?”

Aziraphale’s head appeared in the doorway. He looked rather surprised to see the kettle already sitting on the hob. “Er, no, it’s fine. Sorry.” The angel’s hand reached around to snag a pair of scissors from a mug on the counter and disappeared back around the edge of the doorframe.

“Any good books?” Crowley asked, sifting through their cupboard for two clean teacups.

“Every book is a good book, my dear,” came Aziraphale’s response from the other room, accompanied by the tearing sound of him liberating a volume from its cardboard prison.

Crowley laughed. “Even _Revelation_?” he asked smugly.

Aziraphale appeared at the doorframe a moment later, delicately holding a handsome, leather-bound book with gold leaf on the edges of the pages. “I quite enjoyed our version better,” the angel said mildly. “I seem to recall John being very susceptible to peculiar mushrooms; it’s a wonder Gabriel managed to get him to remember anything.”

Crowley laughed. “Heaven at work on Earth,” he said with a grin. “Though I’m not saying Below is any better,” he added hastily before the angel could capitalise on his generalisation. “Lucifer himself knows that Antichrist baby swap went over like a lead balloon.”

“Yeah,” Aziraphale agreed. “That was at…where again? A hospital?”

“Nunnery,” Crowley corrected. “Satanic nunnery. Loquacious nuns, remember? Good times.”

The kettle began whistling and Crowley turned away to turn the heat on the hob down. Behind him, Aziraphale said, “Yeah…the best.”

The next day, the demon walked in on Aziraphale sitting in his chair, writing something in a plain black leather journal. When Crowley asked him offhandedly what he was writing, the angel shrugged and said it wasn’t important. Crowley didn’t think much of it at first, but when the angel proceeded to spend several hours straight on it, he began to wonder what could possibly be so interesting.

 

~~***~~

 

Later that week, the angel and demon stopped by the pub for dinner, and Bert (who had long since conceded on the name-guessing game) slid over to them a new version of his menu.

“Had them printed this morning,” the barman said proudly, indicating the half sheet of sturdy laminated paper. “My sister-in-law knows a bit of design, helped out giving it that real authentic feel. What do you gents think?”

“Very nice,” Aziraphale said, glancing it over.

Crowley grunted something in affirmation. He stopped and peered closer. “Hey, did you add a new burger? _Roadhouse Blues_ …sounds very American.”

“It’s got the regular fixings,” Bert confided, “plus rashers and bleu cheese.”

“Sounds tasty,” Crowley said, pursuing the rest of the menu with interest. “See anything you like, angel?”

Aziraphale mumbled something noncommittally and Crowley glanced over at him. The angel was looking at the menu, but his eyes didn’t seem to be moving behind his spectacles. He was just staring at it.

“Angel?”

Aziraphale looked up at him and blinked. He looked a little panicky. 

Crowley glanced down at the menu in the angel’s hands—it was exactly the same as the one in his own—and back at Aziraphale. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Aziraphale said hoarsely, turning back to Bert, who was looking at him expectantly. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m a bit—headache, I think.”

Crowley exchanged a worried glance with the barman. “How about we get some fresh air,” the demon said, standing up. Aziraphale looked relieved at the suggestion, and Crowley led him out of the pub, at a bit of a loss. 

Once outside, Aziraphale leaned against the side of the brick building and took several long, deep breaths, eyes closed.

Crowley watched him anxiously. The angel had been fine an hour ago. “You okay?” he asked again.

Aziraphale opened his eyes, noticing Crowley’s expression. He straightened up, moving away from the support the wall had been giving him. “Yeah. Just got a bit…light-headed is all.” He looked rather pale.

Crowley didn’t believe that for a second, but clearly the angel was not about to divulge any more details. “Okay,” he said at length. He glanced back at the pub. “Do you want to stay, or…?”

“Should probably be getting back,” Aziraphale said, rubbing the back of his head. “Have a lie-down, see if that helps.”

“Er, okay,” Crowley said, worries not assuaged in the least. “Do you want me to come with?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I’ll be fine. Check out that new burger for me.”

Crowley hesitated but nodded. “Okay. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

“Sounds good,” the angel said. He looked like he might faint at any moment.

“Phone me when you get there,” Crowley added, making a mental note to go after the angel if he hadn’t phoned in fifteen minutes.

“I’ll be fine,” Aziraphale reassured him. “Really,” he added.

Crowley forced himself to nod. “Phone,” he stressed.

“Okay,” Aziraphale agreed. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“You’d better.” 

Aziraphale nodded again and started down the road. Crowley forced himself to go back into the pub, bemused and more than a little worried.

But Aziraphale phoned ten minutes later, and when Crowley returned to the little cottage under an hour later, it was to find the angel fast asleep in his bed.

 

~~***~~

 

Several weeks later Crowley was again lounging on the sofa, this time absently flipping through that morning’s newspaper, killing time until he had to leave for work.

Aziraphale was taking longer than usual to come down, and Crowley had had the water in the kettle simmering for ten minutes by the time the angel finally made his way downstairs.

“He lives!” Crowley said good-naturedly as he heard Aziraphale make his way into the living room. 

“Morning, my dear,” Aziraphale grumbled, sounding less than awake.

Crowley folded the newspaper and bounced to his feet, turning and balancing the newspaper on the back of the sofa as he did so. He paused when he took in the angel. “You’re not seriously going to work like that?” he asked, fighting down a laugh.

Aziraphale blinked at him and looked down at himself. “I don’t see—” he began.

“Well, you’re off a button or two on that shirt, for starters,” Crowley said. “And your hair, frankly, is a disaster.” He drifted past the angel as Aziraphale’s hand went self-consciously to his hair.

“Must have forgotten to brush it,” the angel muttered.

“Tea’s ready whenever you want it,” Crowley said. “And I picked up some more of those biscuits last night.”

“Good, good,” Aziraphale said, though he didn’t sound like he was listening. 

“I also got more milk and chicken and the other stuff on the list,” Crowley continued, pouring the water for the tea, “but I wasn’t sure on some of the stuff. Your handwriting’s become absolutely indecipherable, I swear. It’s like you’re learning ancient Egyptian.” The demon paused. “Again.”

“Have you seen my spectacles anywhere?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley had to fight down another chuckle. 

“Try by your chair.”

“They’re not there.”

“By the door?” Crowley suggested, dropping a tea bag into each cup. “Or your coat pocket?”

“Ah, coat pocket it was,” Aziraphale said a moment later.

“We’re going to have to paint those fluorescent orange at this rate,” Crowley joked, walking out of the kitchen and handing the disheveled angel his teacup.

“Not a bad idea,” the angel muttered. “Not at all.”


	13. The Wedding

Three months later, the first traces of spring were beginning to seep into the world, bringing out hints of green on the trees and in the grass.

Crowley was stretched out on the sofa with his feet up on the far armrest, working his way through one of Aziraphale’s more interesting books (who knew fifteenth-century business practises could be so villainous?), when he felt, more than heard, the angel enter the room behind him.

Crowley craned his head around, seeing Aziraphale hovering uncertainly in the doorway. “Afternoon,” he said, and went back to reading.

There was a pause so long he had almost forgotten Aziraphale was there when the angel said, rather cautiously, “My dear.”

“Yeah?” Crowley said, not moving from his very comfortable position on the sofa.

“I think something’s wrong.”

Crowley glanced back at the angel. Apart from his odd hovering in the doorway, he looked fine. “Like what?”

Aziraphale bit his lip. “I’ve forgotten where I put my spectacles again.”

Crowley could have laughed. “That’s not a problem, angel, you do that twice a week,” he pointed out. “Check the kitchen.”

Aziraphale didn’t move. “Three times a week.”

Crowley blinked at him, head still craning over the side of the sofa. “What?”

“I’ve been keeping track. It’s more like three times a week.”

Crowley shook off a sudden trace of dread. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “You’re getting old by human standards, right? Humans forget stuff all the time.” He turned back to the book, though his eyes no longer registered the words on the page.

“It’s not just that,” Aziraphale said, and now he was walking around to the other side of the sofa. His hands tugged nervously at his sleeves, and as he came to an awkward stop near his chair, his eyes searched Crowley’s face.

The demon regarded him uncertainly. “What is it?”

Aziraphale swallowed. His hands stopped tugging at his sleeves. “I appear to have—I’ve forgotten—oh, my _dear._ I can’t remember your name.”

Crowley sat up.

“It’s not—I remember who you _are,”_ Aziraphale said quickly, and suddenly he sounded very nervous and upset, “and I remember what you’ve _done_ and everything, I just can’t—I can’t seem to—”

“Crowley,” the demon said. “It’s Crowley.”

Relieved recognition washed over Aziraphale’s face in an instant. “Yes! Yes. Crowley. _God_ , Crowley, I’m sorry. I just—I don’t know.” The angel sank into his chair, looking suddenly very lost. “I feel like I’m falling apart at the seams. There’s just so much I can’t—can’t remember. It usually comes back, hours later, but it was never—it was never like this before.”

Crowley watched Aziraphale in shock, trying to process what the angel was saying.

“I used to be able to list all of the old Kings,” Aziraphale lamented, “all of the prophets, a fair shake at the Caesars. I _lived_ through it, Crowley. But now—” The angel shook his head, looking suddenly very pale. “I’m lucky if I can remember Julius Caesar, and I _met_ him. I mean, weren’t you two hanging out for a while? I just can’t—can’t _remember.”_ Aziraphale put his head in his hands and rubbed at his eyelids with the heels of his hands. “And that’s not even all of it. I don’t know how much is this and how much is just aging, but there are things that are simple that are just…it’s things I don’t think about, just do on reflex. But I can’t do them properly anymore. Like tying my shoes, or—or buttoning my shirt. Remember that day? I honestly—I didn’t even notice, Crowley. It was like I was flying on autopilot but the controls were broken.”

Aziraphale looked hopelessly at the floor. “At first I thought maybe I was just losing memories because you can’t fit everything that’s happened in six millennia into a human mind, but there was no problem for years…I don’t—”

Crowley latched onto something Aziraphale was saying. “Wait—years? How long has this been going on?”

The angel shrugged hopelessly. “Three or four years, maybe? It’s hard to say—it was just little stuff for a long time.” He gestured at his face. “Losing my spectacles—no one else loses things like I do. It can’t be normal. I don’t think you’ve so much as misplaced a paperclip this whole time.”

Crowley opened his mouth, but couldn’t find anything to say. What _could_ he say?

“It’s getting worse, I think,” Aziraphale continued dismally. “I missed work the other day. Thought I had the day off; ended up going in when I wasn’t supposed to be there, instead. I just…I don’t know what’s happening, or if it can be stopped.” Aziraphale looked up and met Crowley’s eyes. The angel looked properly afraid. “I don’t want to forget everything that’s happened.”

Crowley swallowed. “You won’t,” he said.

The demon waited for Aziraphale to ask him how he planned on carrying out such a claim, but instead the angel only nodded, looking at the floor.

“Is there…is there anything I can do?” Crowley asked after a moment. 

Aziraphale shrugged. “I’m not sure. Don’t let me leave the cooker on, I suppose.” The angel glanced up at Crowley. “I just—wanted you to know. In case it gets worse. Before it gets worse.”

Crowley just looked at the angel, at a loss. It felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He was still trying to process what Aziraphale had told him. It didn’t feel real.

Finally the angel stood up and walked back into the kitchen. Crowley’s head turned to follow him, but still he had no words.

When the angel had gone, Crowley slumped back onto the sofa, realising after a moment that he was still holding the book he’d been reading. He closed it without bothering to note what page he was on, running a hand over the smooth cover and feeling the dappled texture beneath his fingertips.

There was a deeply unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach; his earlier cheery mood had evaporated.

For a long time he just gazed down at the book, running his hand over and over its cover, taking in every cracked flaw. His fingers traced the corners, where the material was beginning to fray and unravel. After an indeterminable amount of time, he stood up and set the book back down neatly on the sofa. 

He walked through the kitchen and up the stairs. He found Aziraphale sitting on the edge of his bed, writing in his little black book again.

Crowley hovered uncertainly by the doorframe for a moment, taking Aziraphale in. There were so few differences in his appearance from when he’d been an angel. His face had lined, of course, and there were streaks of grey trailing into the blond at his temples, but everything else was the same. His hair was still a half-combed halo, and he still dressed like a professor from the fifties, tartan jumpers and button-ups and all. Even the spectacles resting on his nose suited him perfectly. The only thing missing was that little spark of divinity, the aura of his hidden wings that always seemed to permeate the air whenever the angel was around. Crowley hadn’t felt it in years—had ceased even noticing it several millennia ago—but suddenly he found himself missing it very much.

“You sure there’s nothing I can do?” Crowley asked, his voice sounding softer than usual, even to his own ears.

Aziraphale looked up, his pen coming to a momentary standstill on the paper. “No, I’m—actually,” the angel interrupted himself, glancing down at the black-bound book in his lap. “You can help with this, if you like. Probably be better with both of us.”

Crowley frowned at the book as he came closer. “What is it?” The angel had been writing intermittently in it for months now, but Aziraphale had never told him what it was when he’d expressed an interest.

Aziraphale looked down at it, running his thumb over a corner. “A journal,” he said. “More of a memoir, really.” He looked up at Crowley. “Or an autobiography. It’s my life, Crowley, as much of it as I can remember, before I can’t remember it anymore.”

Crowley could only look wordlessly at the angel for a long moment. Then his eyes dropped to the book, where Aziraphale’s cramped handwriting spilled across the pages. He was over halfway though the volume. He’d been writing it for a long time. 

“Oh,” the demon said at last. He took a breath and sat down on the edge of the bed next to Aziraphale. “What part are you at?”

“We just found out Warlock wasn’t the Antichrist.”

Crowley gave him a sharp look. “You’re at the Apocalypse already?”

“No, I’m working my way backwards,” Aziraphale clarified. “I remember the most recent stuff the best. The Apocalypse was the start of this whole mess; I’m working forward from there. Then I’ll pick another point; maybe World War Two, or Kennedy’s assassination, and work forward from there.”

“Kennedy; heh, that was a disaster,” Crowley said with a huff, remembering the incident fondly. “I can’t believe you deflected the bullet and it still hit him. Talk about bad luck, eh?”

“More like sabotage,” the angel countered. “I seem to recall a certain someone was distracting me.”

“It’s not my fault you’ve got a sweet tooth and no willpower,” Crowley protested. “And it really was delicious sponge cake.” 

The angel made a noise that didn’t disagree, and Crowley felt himself start to smile. The heavy feeling in his chest was beginning to lift.

“See, you remembered that,” Crowley pointed out hopefully. “Maybe it’s not all as bad as you think.”

Aziraphale smiled, but there was little hope in it. “I still have most of it,” he said. “Sometimes crystal clear, sometimes not at all. I’m hoping if I write it all down, I can go back and remind myself later, if I forget. Better safe than sorry.”

“Good idea,” Crowley said. “Though you’ve always got me, right? Lived through it all right with you.”

“Yeah,” Aziraphale said, and suddenly he looked a little more cheerful. “I suppose I do.”

“So,” Crowley said, rubbing his hands together and feeling considerably better about the whole affair, “Warlock. We were in the Bentley, right? Listening to the Best of Queen, of course. And then Below decided to get in touch…”

The months after that seemed to fly by. Crowley’s workload at the bank increased, and Aziraphale spent more time than ever visiting with the villagers. Or maybe he wasn’t spending more time away, the demon reflected one day after Aziraphale had left to have tea with one of the women from the quilting group. Maybe it was just that Crowley was noticing his absence more. 

It was as though, now that Crowley knew there might be problems, he felt the need to give the angel a once-over before he left the cottage for any reason. Usually Aziraphale was quite presentable, positively cheery as he called a good-bye to the demon, but occasionally his hair would be wild and clearly uncombed, or he would have his jumper on backwards. A couple of times he even tried putting his coat on upside down. They were little things, but they were common enough occurrences that Crowley could never forget they were there.

Aziraphale might spend ten minutes tying his shoes, or go out to weed the flower garden only to return a minute later, having discovered he had already weeded it. Then there were larger hiccups.

One afternoon, Crowley came back from work to find Aziraphale and Faye Uphill, the local seamstress, having tea in his own living room.

The angel greeted him with a warm enough smile, but Faye pulled Crowley aside and told him that she’d found Aziraphale wandering out by her place near the edge of the village, evidently quite lost on his way back from work. 

“He was in his right mind, just seemed to have rather forgotten how to get back,” she said to him in a serious undertone. “You’re lucky I found him. If he’d kept going, he could have walked straight out of the village. You never know what could happen to him. You’ve got to keep an eye on people like him, you know.”

Crowley gave her a sharp look. “People like him?” he repeated, tone icy.

She returned his look with a reproachful one. “You know,” she said. “He’s not exactly a spring chicken. Happens to all of us.” She turned to glance over her shoulder at Aziraphale. “He’s a dear, but he _is_ getting on in years,” she said, a little kindlier. 

“Getting on in years,” Crowley muttered, knowing it was true while reflecting ironically that the angel looked in great shape to him for being something over six thousand.

“Just keep an eye on him, okay? Who knows where he’ll wander off to next time, and not everyone’s as watchful as I am. Luckily I’d been over and knew where you lived; he didn’t even know the address.”

She gave him a meaningful look whose meaning escaped Crowley entirely, and then walked towards the door, waving a good-bye to Aziraphale as she went.

Once she was gone, Crowley headed over to where the angel was sitting on the sofa, hands in his lap.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale said before Crowley could even open his mouth. “I just sort of…got lost and didn’t realise.” The angel sank back into the sofa as though he fully expected to be reprimanded. “I’ll try to pay more attention next time.”

Crowley couldn’t find it in himself to be upset with the angel, and only sighed instead. “Just don’t leave the village and you should be fine,” he said. “But you should write our address down and put it in your coat pocket.” He paused, and then added, “Put my mobile number on there too. The private line. Just in case.”

Aziraphale gave him a sharp look—the angel knew how securely Crowley kept that number. “And you can phone me if you get lost or something,” Crowley said, keeping his voice level. “It’s really no bother.”

Aziraphale looked a little uncertain but did as he was asked.

The angel continued writing his journals, finishing the Apocalypse volume and buying new, matching journals for the next sections. He could usually fit some fifty years into a single, relatively slim volume; for most of history the angel and demon had spent a remarkable amount of time simply trying to avoid their duties and the inevitable misadventures that accompanied them. Crowley assumed that there were only so many dinners at the Ritz one could write before summarising that they were basically all just the same.

Crowley helped out where he could, sometimes providing as little as a date, name, or some other detail, and other times recounting whole episodes from his perspective. He never directly read anything Aziraphale wrote, though he always had a general idea of what was happening; he _had_ been there for most of it. Sometimes he wondered, though, how much the angel added that wasn’t just an unemotional list of names, dates, and events. There were plenty of things about the angel that Crowley didn’t know, and he found himself wondering absently what sort of things he might learn if he read the journals. Aziraphale never said he couldn’t; after finishing them, he even numbered the upper right-hand corner of each cover and lined them up next to each other on the bookcase, in reverse chronological order. They just sat there, neat little black bound volumes that Crowley’s fingers itched to pluck from their shelf. But he never did; it just didn’t seem right.

For the better part of a year the angel and demon operated under the assumption that what was happening to Aziraphale was simply a product of their circumstances. The angel was mortal now, and the minds of humans broke down over time. It was just what happened. Between that and the fact that Aziraphale had far more memories to lose than the average human, it should have been no surprise at all that the angel sometimes had it a bit rough.

That changed the night Harper got married. Crowley and Aziraphale excused themselves from attending the ceremony, as neither of them felt like going within twenty metres of the little parish church, but the reception was held at the pub. Bert had insisted that his rival food vendor come by the pub for free dinner and drinks, something that drew a sizable crowd to the celebrations. 

Crowley and Aziraphale took their usual spots at the bar, though they both spent most of the time turned around on the barstools so they could join in the discussion and embarrassing stories being passed around. 

A particularly private one concerning one of Harper’s teenage conquests had just been aired, causing a roar of laughter to pass through the crowd as Harper’s bride, a currently scowling woman named Mara, smacked him playfully on the arm.

Crowley chuckled and took a sip of his drink. Next to him, Aziraphale made a disapproving face but even he couldn’t suppress a huff of amusement as he twisted back around to face the bar momentarily.

“Hey, Bert,” he called. “Can I get another one of these…these…the usual,” the angel finished lamely.

“Sure thing,” Bert said, and Aziraphale turned back around a moment later with a freshly filled glass. 

Across the room, Harper’s brother, also his best man, raised his hands for silence and raised a mug of lager. “To my little brother,” he said, “who’s been the biggest pain in the arse I could ask for. And though I wouldn’t have it any other way, I’m glad that now he gets to be a pain in someone else’s.” 

Harper coloured, but Mara leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, which seemed to cheer him up.

“To the happy couple!” Harper’s brother declared, and took a sloppy drink of lager. There was a round of cheering and Crowley and Aziraphale took a drink along with everyone else. For a moment there was silence as everyone drank, and then someone started up a playlist of party songs, and soon the room was abuzz with chatter again.

“Watch my drink; I’ll be back,” Aziraphale said, patting the demon on the shoulder before heading off through the maze of tables draped in white cloth towards the loo.

Crowley took another sip and reached around to place his glass on the bar beside the angel’s.

“How’s he doing?” Bert asked, leaning against the opposite side of the bar.

Crowley glanced back around at him. “Who?”

The barman jerked his head in the direction Aziraphale had gone. “Your friend. Ziraphale. Of the unknown first name.” Bert’s tone diverted briefly to humour. 

“Oh, he’s doing fine,” Crowley said noncommittally.

“Has he seen anyone about it?”

Crowley turned around further to face the barman more fully. “Seen anyone about what?” he asked, rather bemused.

“You know,” Bert said, suddenly sounding a little uncomfortable. “He’s got Alzheimer’s, right? What do the docs say?”

Crowley blinked at him. “Wait, _what?”_

Bert gave him a strange look. “Sorry if I’m crossing a line here,” he said nervously. “I’d just noticed—I thought—” The barman paused to collect his thoughts. “Look, he keeps forgetting his glasses, tries to walk off without them. Forgot my name a couple three times. Once tried talking to me about a friend of his, Michael somebody. Or maybe he was an old boss; I couldn’t really tell.”

Crowley spun all the way around on the barstool, fixing Bert with an intent stare.

“Look, it’s no bother, and it’s none of my business,” the barman said quickly, raising his hands as though to ward off an attack. “I’m just worried about him, okay?” Bert swallowed and looked back again in the direction Aziraphale had gone. “My mum had Alzheimer’s, really bad, and it started just like this. Little things—forgetting her keys, mixing up me and my brothers. I know if we’d taken her in to see the docs sooner they might have been able to do more for her.”

“Wait, this—forgetting things—this is _a disease?”_

Bert looked surprised. “Well, yeah.”

Crowley sat back. “I thought it was normal—I thought it happened to all hu—everybody,” he corrected himself quickly. “I thought it was natural.”

“Well, it’s natural enough. They don’t really know what causes it, see,” Bert said. “And sometimes forgetting is just forgetting. But then sometimes it’s dementia or Alzheimer’s, or something else entirely. But he’s not old enough for it to be just him forgetting, I don't think. And it’s better safe than sorry. A lot of things can go wrong in the brain, you know. Could be cancer, even.”

Crowley stared at him, feeling a rising dread. He hadn’t considered human illness as a possible cause.

“It’s probably not cancer, though,” Bert said quickly, misinterpreting the demon’s sudden paleness. “But seriously, he hasn’t been to see a specialist?”

Crowley shook his head. “I didn’t think—” he bowed his head, feeling suddenly overwhelmed at the enormity of this oversight on his part, this mistake that might have dire consequences for the angel. “I just didn’t think.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Bert said consolingly, looking a little alarmed at Crowley’s sudden fall in spirits. “I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end. I’d get him in to see someone as soon as you can, though. There’s probably someone who specialises in that sort of thing in Cardiff, Bristol maybe. Just in case, you know?”

Crowley nodded blankly, just taking Bert’s words in. Cardiff. Bristol. They were some fifty miles distant—too far, in other words. 

Bert gave him a sad smile. “Sorry for bringing down the wedding cheer,” he said, sounding properly contrite. He looked like he wanted to stay and talk more, but another person at the bar was trying to flag him down, and he reluctantly moved away.

Crowley sat there in silence, staring at his drink. Some time later Aziraphale dropped down next to him, as cheerful as ever. He took a sip of his drink and paused; Crowley could feel the angel’s eyes on him.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

Crowley took a deep breath and tore his eyes away from his drink. “Yeah,” he lied, casting a look over into the centre of the room as a great roar went up; Harper and Mara indulged the crowd with a kiss.

Aziraphale traced his gaze. “They’ll be good together,” he said. “I’ve met Mara a couple of times—she’s nice. Harper’s head over heels for her.”

Crowley felt the corner of his mouth twitch up as he tried to tear his mind from his conversation with Bert. “Your area of expertise, eh, angel?” he teased, though his heart wasn’t in it.

“No, not really,” Aziraphale said with a shrug. “Never was.”

“What, the angel doesn’t like weddings? Isn’t Above all for that sort of thing?”

“Well, yeah, generally,” Aziraphale said, watching as some of the newlyweds’ friends and family started tugging on the lucky couple's arms, urging them to dance. “But that was never really my line of work. And, besides, angels don’t really…you know.”

Crowley gave him a surprised look. This conversation had taken an unexpected turn. 

“I mean, even as a human,” Aziraphale continued, eyes never leaving the couple as their friends pulled tables apart to create an impromptu dance floor. “I wondered, if maybe—but no.” Aziraphale shrugged and looked down at his glass, but his tone cheered up a bit. “Not really my thing.” On the dance floor, Harper and his bride were slow dancing.

There was an awkward silence between the angel and demon.

“Not really, er, mine, either,” Crowley said quietly after a moment, feeling his cheeks burning as he looked resolutely straight ahead of him.

They sat in a slightly uncomfortable silence for a few long minutes, the romantic song playing in the background slowly fading away. There was a fresh round of applause for the newlyweds, and then the music abruptly changed to something modern, with a strong and fast downbeat. Crowley felt his foot absently tapping along as Bert, standing over near the wall, brought the lights down. Someone had set up a light-up disco ball earlier, and now it started splaying neon colours over the walls. 

Crowley felt the angel bump his shoulder with his own and looked over. Aziraphale had a sly grin on his face, where a bright cyan light played over his features. It switched to magenta as the angel, with a mischievous jerk of his head towards the centre of the room, where more tables were being pushed aside, asked, “Want to dance?”

Crowley couldn’t help himself; he laughed. “Dance?” he asked incredulously. Aziraphale seemed unperturbed by his response, grinning as a rainbow swirled over his face and caught in his hair. “Aziraphale, you can’t dance. All you know is the _gavotte.”_

“That’s a dance,” Aziraphale said pleasantly.

“From the _eighteenth century,”_ Crowley stressed. “It’s a _folk dance.”_

“Well, then I’ll learn something new,” Aziraphale said, sounding far too optimistic for his own good.

Crowley opened his mouth to shoot the angel down, eyebrow already quirked for his remark, and then paused. He glanced slyly over at the dance floor, where the style of choice seemed to involve a lot of head-banging and arm-waving. He felt a grin start to spread over his own face. This was something he wanted to see.

“You want to dance?” the demon said, standing up and straightening out his cuffs. “Sure. Let’s dance. Below’s got all the good moves, anyway.”

Aziraphale grinned and stood up, taking one last swig of his drink before placing it back on the bar and rolling up his sleeves.

The angel started out with the gavotte, as feared. Then he attempted to learn something new.

It was everything Crowley had hoped it would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to see how I imagine Aziraphale dancing the gavotte, it’s at 0:41 in this neat YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo1LfU67XJc  
> (also Crowley is totally at 2:16)


	14. House Call

The leading researcher in aging and memory loss in Britain was neurologist Dr Renée Griffiths; Crowley made some expensive calls and convinced her that making a house call wouldn’t be a waste of her time.

Two days after Harper and Mara set off for their honeymoon, Crowley sat Aziraphale down and told him what he’d learned from Bert. Aziraphale was surprised at first, and then said that that explained some of the things people had been saying to him. Since human medicine was outside of the purview of either of them, they agreed that Aziraphale should see someone who knew what they were talking about. The angel looked worried about it, which in turn only increased Crowley’s anxiety about the whole affair. And if it _was_ something serious, Crowley knew that it would be entirely his fault, for not having looked into it earlier.

It was raining the morning Dr Griffiths arrived, carrying a large briefcase and rapping smartly on the door.

Crowley let her in and showed her to the living room.

“Bit wet out there,” Aziraphale greeted her, standing up and shaking her dark-skinned hand. “Sorry about the short notice.”

“Nothing to worry about,” she said, glancing at Crowley. “You made it worth my while.” She turned back to the angel. “And you are Mr Ziraphale?”

“That’s right. It appears I may be in a bit of a conundrum.”

Dr Griffiths gave him a kind smile. “Well, we’ll find that out together. May I—?” she gestured to the kitchen table.

“Please do,” Aziraphale said. 

Dr Griffiths laid her briefcase on the table and opened it, revealing a stack of papers. “Now, since Mr Crowley tells me you’ve been experiencing memory problems, we’d usually start with a run through an MRI machine—that’s a brain scan. See what’s physically happening. But Mr Crowley,” here she glanced again at the demon, “said that wasn’t possible and that I should do the best I could with what I could bring with me.” She pulled some papers out of her briefcase and began laying them out over the table. “So I think I’ll run you through some memory tests, and try to see what we can learn from those.” She turned to Aziraphale, casting a meaningful glance at the demon hovering nearby. “You’re entitled to privacy in these matters, Mr Ziraphale, if you’d rather Mr Crowley left…?”

Aziraphale blinked, looking a little bemused. “No, of course not.”

“Then if you two would care to sit down, we can begin.”

The angel seated himself opposite the doctor at the kitchen table, and Crowley drew up a chair and positioned himself at Aziraphale’s elbow.

“We’ll start with a test that will tell us about how your brain is handling spatial information,” Dr Griffiths said, sliding two pieces of paper and a pen over to the angel. The first sheet was blank, and the second had a complicated geometric figure of overlapping shapes printed on it. “I would like you to duplicate the design on this sheet of paper,” the doctor explained, pointing between the two pages.

Aziraphale took a second to study the tangle of shapes. To Crowley, it looked a bit like a sideways house with some extra triangles and circles thrown in.

“You can take as long as you like,” she said.

Aziraphale lifted the pen and, continually glancing between the two pages, began transferring the shape onto the blank sheet of paper. Crowley didn’t say anything but his eyes followed every stroke. 

The angel’s hand didn’t look like it was shaking, but even his straightest lines were rather wobbly. Aziraphale had never really been interested in the fine arts, but Crowley felt his spirits sinking as the angel slowed down. Aziraphale looked back and forth between the two sheets of paper, pen hovering uncertainly. He had carried the main shapes over, but the demon could see a couple of lines he had left out, and the relationships between the shapes were not all correct. Aziraphale looked back and forth between them, and set the pen down. 

“It’s a bit tricky,” he said.

Dr Griffiths nodded and took the pages back without comment. Crowley stared at Aziraphale, trying to look straight into his head.

“Next, I’m going to tell you three short words, and I want you to remember them for me. I’m going to ask you to repeat them back to me later.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Okay.”

Dr Griffiths looked down at where she’d perched a clipboard in her lap. “Bird, soup, flag,” she said. Aziraphale nodded again. 

The doctor gave him a steady look, flipped to another page on her clipboard, and looked up again. “What can you tell me about the sort of symptoms you’ve been experiencing? Anything out of the ordinary, even if it doesn’t seem connected.”

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley.

“Well, he likes losing his spectacles,” the demon supplied. “He got a bit lost the other day, wandered off.”

“I misplace my books sometimes,” Aziraphale added.

“He, er, forgot my name once,” Crowley said. Aziraphale glanced back at him again, and the look on his face was so incredibly apologetic than the demon felt compelled to add, “But it’s okay.”

Dr Griffiths took notes. “What else?”

Crowley thought back. “Sometimes he forgets to comb his hair,” he offered.

“Coats,” Aziraphale said, “sometimes they’re a bit…it’s like I don’t realise…”

“He tries to put them on upside down,” Crowley clarified. “Not often, but…”

Dr Griffiths nodded. “Some things will tend to recur, while some will only happen once or twice,” she said. “They might be general and specific. Both are important.”

“Well,” Crowley said, wondering how to phrase this best, “he and I have a…long history together,” he said delicately. “And he’s been forgetting bits of it. Names, places, that sort of thing.”

“I’m writing down everything I remember,” Aziraphale said helpfully. “Before I lose it.”

“That’s a good idea,” Dr Griffiths said, pausing in her note-taking. “Stimulating the memories, keeping the mind sharp—that can help.”

“It’s mostly little stuff,” Crowley explained. “Trouble tying his shoes, trying to put the tea on twice, that kind of thing.”

“Sometimes, when I’m gardening,” Aziraphale added, “I’ll be weeding, and then realise I’ve been trying to pull out weeds that I don't have a grip on.” He mimed grasping at something that wasn’t there. “I’ll be trying to weed the air.”

Dr Griffiths smiled, and Aziraphale did too a little, but Crowley saw little humour in the situation. 

“Is there anything else you can think of?” she asked. 

Crowley scratched his ear. “That’s most of it, I think,” he said.

“When do you estimate this started? Recently?”

“Probably three or four years ago,” Crowley guessed, glancing at Aziraphale for confirmation. The angel nodded.

Dr Griffiths nodded, made a note, and flipped to a new page on her clipboard. She glanced through some of the papers in her briefcase and then slid two of them over to Aziraphale. They were two photographs of a construction someone had built using coloured wooden blocks. It looked like something a child would build. After a moment Crowley realised the two photographs were of the same arrangement of blocks, just from different angles.

“I’d like you to look between these photographs,” she said, “and tell me if they show the same object.”

Aziraphale leaned over the photographs, looking intently from one to the other. “Oh dear.”

Crowley felt himself leaning forward as well, eyes jumping between the two images. One of the yellow blocks near the edge of the construction, Crowley noticed, was positioned differently in the second image, as was a small blue block near the centre. The photographs were of different constructions.

Aziraphale looked at them for a long time. “Yes, they’re the same,” he said at last. Crowley looked at him and the angel kept staring intently at the images. “Wait,” Aziraphale corrected himself after a moment. “No, they’re different. This blue one here is turned the other way.” He tapped the blue block in the centre. 

Dr Griffiths nodded, marked something on her clipboard, and took the photographs away. 

“That’s a bit tricky,” the angel said, more to Crowley than anyone. “They move something just a little…”

The doctor slid two more photographs up to him. “How about these two?”

Dr Griffiths tested Aziraphale two more times with the photographs of blocks. The angel confidently declared both to be identical, though Crowley noticed that the second set was different.

The doctor made no comment, only marking something on her clipboard. She looked back up at Aziraphale. “Now, I’m going to list off ten words, and I’d like you to repeat them back to me when I’m done.”

“Go ahead.”

“Water, crown, chest, kettle, horse, ball, apple, lorry, tie, dart.”

“Tie, dart, water,” Aziraphale listed back quickly, “chest, apple, lorry.” He paused. “Was tea in there? Oh, yes: kettle.” He paused again. “Er, how many was that?” 

“Seven,” Crowley told him.

Aziraphale’s face fell. “Ah.” He glanced over at the demon. “Sorry.”

Crowley shook his head.

“Mr Ziraphale, do you remember the three words I told you at the beginning of our session?” Dr Griffiths asked.

“Bird, soup, flag,” the angel said after a moment’s thought.

The doctor nodded and ticked something else off on her clipboard before looking up again. “Now, these results, whatever they may be, don’t prove anything definitively,” Dr Griffiths said, looking at them calmly over the top of her clipboard. “Since we only have this one data point, we can’t speculate as to whether you’re getting worse, better, or staying the same. Maybe you’ve never had the best memory.”

Aziraphale shook his head at the same time Crowley said, “He had a terrific memory.”

Dr Griffiths looked between them.

“He could practically remember the _page number_ of something he'd read in a book,” Crowley said. “And that was among hundreds of books, and even if he’d read it a mil—decades ago,” Crowley caught himself.

“We still can’t speculate too wildly,” Dr Griffiths said. “Not without more complete data. We should repeat these tests regularly, to chart Mr Ziraphale’s progress, but there’s only so much these tests can show us.” She glanced at Crowley. “What I really need are brain scans—it’s the only way to know for sure what we’re dealing with. I can’t diagnose on memory tests alone.”

Crowley frowned at her. “This MRI machine—is there any way we could do that here?”

Dr Griffiths shook her head. “It doesn’t matter how much money you have, Mr Crowley, you can’t move a multi-million-pound piece of technology the size of a room across the country. You need to go in to a hospital.”

Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Where’s the nearest one?” Crowley asked. “Geographically?”

The doctor thought. “I’m based out of London, but I think the University of Bristol might have one. I could make some calls.”

Crowley nodded, weighing pros and cons. 

“It’s a bad idea, Crowley,” Aziraphale hissed to him.

Dr Griffiths watched their exchange with interest.

Crowley stood up and gestured to Aziraphale that he wanted to talk to him in private.

“Excuse us,” Aziraphale said before following the demon into the kitchen. “You can’t seriously be thinking about this?” Aziraphale whispered to him fiercely.

“If it’s the only way—”

“Only way to do what?” the angel hissed. “We know what’s going on, Crowley. I’m losing my memory. A brain scan isn’t going to stop that from happening.”

“You don’t know that,” Crowley snapped back. “With modern medicine—who knows?” Something occurred to him, and he wondered suddenly why it had taken him so long to think of it. He reached out and placed a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder.

The demon snagged some of his power and poured it into the angel, directing it the best he could, instructing it to heal Aziraphale’s mind and memories. He felt some of his power sink into the angel, and pulled his hand back hopefully. 

“That time in Greece when the Trojans were invading,” Crowley quizzed him quickly. “I got discorporated. Do you remember how?” 

Aziraphale frowned. Crowley searched his face desperately, looking for even a trace of recognition, but there was nothing. The angel blinked and shook his head sadly. “Sorry, my dear, I’ve got nothing.”

Crowley sighed and dropped his gaze. “It was worth a shot.”

Aziraphale put a hand on the demon’s shoulder. “We don’t know what might happen if we leave Midfarthing,” the angel said quietly. “We don’t know if they’re still searching for me, or how. We don’t know what they would do if they caught us. It’s not worth the risk.”

“They’d kill us,” Crowley said flatly. He looked up at Aziraphale. “But you’re going to die anyway, if we can’t find a way to unFall you. And I swear, I’ll find a way—but we need to fix this now, before it gets worse. It’ll buy us more time.”

“They might do more than just kill us,” Aziraphale whispered darkly. “At least _I’d_ die fairly quickly—but if they grabbed _you_ again—”

Crowley felt himself shaking his head. “They won’t. And besides, they aren’t that interested in me, remember?”

“I don’t want to take that risk,” Aziraphale whispered. He licked his lips and glanced over Crowley’s shoulder at the doorway to the living room. “Look,” he said, keeping his voice low, “if you really want me to get this scan, I’ll do it, but I don’t want you to come with. It’s too dangerous.”

“Not in a million years,” Crowley hissed back. “You think I’d let you leave— _by yourself?_ So that Above can grab you and I’d never—never—no. You haven’t got your powers, angel, you won’t even be able to feel an aura. You’d be defenceless.” 

Aziraphale’s mouth twisted unhappily.

“I’ll come with,” Crowley continued, “and keep an eye out, and if anything so much as _smells_ suspicious, I’ll fly us back here straight away. Besides, Above isn’t keen on humans, right? If we go right there and come right back, and drive the whole way and keep our heads down, what makes you think they’d notice us?”

Aziraphale still looked uncertain, but Crowley could tell he was making headway. “Bristol’s only a, what, hour drive down the M5? I can cast a cloaking spell over us as well, to hide my aura—and if we switched up what we’re wearing, get some hats or something—we wouldn’t be as recognisable in case they’re looking for the last corporations we had.”

“Maybe,” Aziraphale said uncertainly.

“It’ll work,” Crowley said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “It _has_ been ten years—surely they’re not looking _that_ hard anymore—doesn’t Above have more pressing things to do with their time?”

Aziraphale grunted agreement. 

“Okay,” Crowley said after a moment. “Are we good?”

Aziraphale still looked a little unhappy but nodded. “Yeah, we’re good. But at the first sign of trouble you’re out of there.”

_“We’re_ out of there,” Crowley corrected.

Aziraphale’s mouth twisted but he nodded.

Crowley mirrored the angel’s nod and started back towards the living room.

“Wait,” Aziraphale said, following him partway. Crowley turned back to face him.

“How did you get discorporated?” the angel asked, looking genuinely interested. “Back in Greece.”

Crowley felt a smile creep over his face. “The Greek commander gave you a spear and you didn’t know what to do with it. You turned around and smacked me in the face with it and I fell off the battlements,” he said, savouring the look of horror that came over Aziraphale’s face. “You killed me, angel,” Crowley said, not uncheerfully.

“I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale said, looking aghast.

“Yeah, that’s what you said then, too,” Crowley told him, clapping the angel on the shoulder. “Right before you said, ‘Don’t let it get you down.’”


	15. Bristol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should note that I am not a, nor do I know any, medical professionals.

Two weeks later, the angel and demon climbed into Bert’s car, which they had borrowed for the occasion. Crowley insisted on driving, though Aziraphale reminded him that if he sped too vigourously and got them into a crash, only one of them was likely to survive. 

Crowley had donned a dark green flat cap and one of Aziraphale’s too-big jumpers as a disguise, and the angel had found a patterned Hawaiian shirt at the secondhand shop and topped off the effect with a Panama hat. They looked like a pair of tramps, but an angel and a demon they did not.

Dr Griffiths had been called out of the country on urgent business, but had explained that it would take a couple of days for the results of the scan to be processed anyway. She had wanted to go over the final results with them at her office in London, but Crowley made sure some more money changed hands and convinced her to drive all the way out to Midfarthing to deliver the news in person once the results were in.

Crowley kept his eyes scanning the horizon as Bert’s car rolled out of the little village. He felt the difference in the air as they moved outside of the area Adam had placed the spell over. The demon kept his eyes roving back and forth, knuckles white on the steering wheel. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary, and Crowley carefully wound the car down the narrow roads and finally onto the M5.

Aziraphale spent most of the trip looking through the window, evidently enjoying what little he could see of the rest of the world. 

They made it to Bristol in a little under an hour, Crowley speeding but keeping it reasonable and actually making an effort to remain in his lane; there was no sense in doing anything that might arouse unwanted attention. He kept the radio firmly off, afraid that Below might notice and decide to find out what Crowley had been doing for the last ten years.

It took Aziraphale three attempts at directing him before they made it to the University, a large cluster of Gothic buildings on the far side of the city. It took them a further fifteen minutes to make it to the medical buildings, and another ten before they found the correct waiting room. Crowley gave their names to the receptionist, and she instructed them to take a seat while she called a Mr Tawfeek, the radiologist who’d be running the scan.

A young Arabic man with a shock of black hair arrived not long after. “Hallo!” he greeted them, with rather too much cheer for Crowley’s liking. “I’m Rashid Tawfeek. I’m a graduate student here, and I’ll be running the MRI machinery for you today.” 

“Aziraphale,” said the angel, shaking the young man’s hand. Crowley had to elbow him before he hastily amended, “Er, Ambrose Ziraphale.”

“Pleasure,” Rashid said, moving to shake Crowley’s hand as well. 

“Anthony Crowley,” the demon supplied.

“Excellent. If you’d come right this way…” He led them out of the waiting room and down a long hallway, passing the occasional lab-coated med student. “So I understand it’s Mr Ziraphale who’s here for the scan?” Rashid asked.

“That’s right,” Aziraphale confirmed. Crowley focussed on constructing a mental map of their current location in relation to three separate exits.

They made a sharp right turn and Rashid pushed open a door with the letters MRI printed on it in large black text.

Inside was a narrow rectangular room with a door and a wide window on one of the long sides. Through the window Crowley could see a second room, this one bigger and brighter. Some sort of large, cylindrical white machine sat inside of it, near an equally white padded table. 

Rashid walked forward and stopped near a long console under the window. He turned back to them. “Welcome to the MRI,” he said. “How about I walk you through how it works first?” He spent several minutes explaining how the machine used a very strong but harmless magnetic field to map the brain in multiple layers. He obviously thought it was all terribly interesting, but Crowley just wanted the bottom line.

“It’ll show us what the problem is?” the demon interrupted. 

Rashid nodded, looking rather used to being cut off in the middle of his technical explanation. “Or _where_ the problem is, at least, and that can tell us what sort of disease is causing it, if it is a disease.”

“Well, then, let’s be getting on with it,” Crowley said, resisting the urge to glance over his shoulder. He’d been checking every five minutes since they’d climbed out of the car, looking to see if they were being tailed. So far nothing had been amiss.

“Sure,” Rashid said easily. He turned to Aziraphale. “First, we’re going to put you in a gown before we put you in the machine. You can keep your pants and socks on, but leave everything else in the lavatory, okay?” He gestured to a door in the corner that Crowley had assumed led to a closet. “And you can leave your glasses in there, and anything else you’ve got on you that’s metal. Coins, rings, watches, anything like that. And if you have anything with a magnetic strip, like a credit card, you should make sure you leave that in there too.”

“Okay,” Aziraphale said, accepting the bundle of cloth the radiologist offered him. He made a face at Crowley as he headed towards the lavatory.

Once he was gone, Crowley turned back to Rashid. “This is totally safe, right?” he demanded quietly.

Rashid gave him a reassuring look. “Of course.”

Crowley frowned but took him at his word.

They waited awkwardly for a few minutes before Aziraphale emerged from the lavatory. The long shapeless gown was less than flattering, and Crowley couldn’t suppress a snigger. Aziraphale—now sans his spectacles—glared at the demon and stuck out his tongue.

Rashid, luckily, was paging through some paperwork he’d had lying on the console and missed the exchange. “Dr Griffiths said you didn’t have a pacemaker or anything, right?” the radiologist asked. “No invasive surgeries with metal components?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “Nope.”

“How about metal fillings?”

“No.”

“All right, then,” Rashid said, dropping the pages back onto the console. “If you’d come right this way.” He walked through the door leading to the other room. Aziraphale followed and Crowley trailed after them.

“If you would lie down on here,” Rashid said, directing Aziraphale to the rectangular table, which Crowley now saw was on wheels. The top of the table was padded, but it still looked dreadfully uncomfortable. There were also several straps hanging from its sides. Crowley felt himself still.

“Right up here,” Rashid repeated, and Aziraphale pulled himself onto the table. “Just lie on your back, however’s most comfortable.” Aziraphale did as he was directed, casting a slightly worried glance in Crowley's direction.

“Now, what’s going to happen is I’m going to wheel you right into the MRI machine,” Rashid said. “Then I’m going to leave, and Mr Crowley and I are going to be just in the other room, okay? There’re speakers and a microphone in the machine, so I’ll be giving you some instructions to make sure you’re arranged properly. Once we get things going, I’ll ask you not to speak, and you’re just going to lie there for about an hour. Try not to move very much. Just relax, but don't fall asleep. We’ll play some music. You can close your eyes if you like. The machine’s going to make some clicking and whirring noises, but that’s normal; don’t worry about it. It might get a little claustrophobic in there, and if you want to be pulled out, just say so and I’ll turn the machine off and come and get you. We’d have to start over, though, so try to make it all the way through if you can.” Rashid paused. “Any questions?”

“Er, I don’t think so,” Aziraphale said, casting Crowley another look that said he really didn’t want to be there. Crowley, who was having second thoughts himself, didn’t know what to tell him.

“All right, I’ll just get the straps then and we’ll be set.”

“Straps?” Aziraphale asked, voice wavering as panic flared in his eyes. At the same time, Crowley took a convulsive step forward, staring at Rashid and abruptly throwing all of his attention into trying to sense if the man was actually an angel or demon in disguise, already drawing power from himself for an attack.

“Just these,” Rashid said calmly, oblivious to the demon coming up behind him, prepared to strike first and ask questions later. The radiologist raised one of the padded straps and showed it to the angel. “They won’t be very tight, and you could slip them if you really wanted. It’s just to keep you in place so you don’t move around accidentally during the scan.”

Crowley couldn’t find a trace of anything other than humanity in the radiologist, and looked past him to Aziraphale, looking for a cue. The angel was searching Rashid’s face, and whatever he found seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded and some of the panic faded from his eyes. “Okay,” he said, and shot Crowley a reassuring glance. The demon took a step back, letting his grip on his power loosen.

Rashid fit the straps carefully around the angel, directing him to put his head all the way back and look straight up. He asked if Aziraphale was comfortable and then carefully rolled the table into the MRI chamber. Crowley felt an irrational flare of fear as the angel left his line of sight for the first time since they’d left the protection of Midfarthing.

Rashid checked something on a little screen on the machine and then walked back towards Crowley. “Now we’ll just step back into this room…” He indicated the room with the window they had started in. Crowley’s teeth ground together in worry as he was herded from the room, fighting the urge to drag the rolling table back out of the machine.

Rashid closed the door behind them and held a button down on the console. He leaned towards where a small microphone jutted out of the console. “Hallo, Mr Ziraphale? How are you doing?” Crowley’s eyes immediately locked onto the microphone and then jumped to look through the glass at where the angel’s feet were just visible sticking out of the end of the machine. 

“Just fine,” Aziraphale’s voice replied, emanating from some nearby speakers. 

“All right, we’re going to get the machine started,” Rashid said into the microphone. “Things will start making noises and humming, but that’s normal.”

“Sounds good,” Aziraphale’s voice said.

Rashid moved to the side and started pressing some buttons on the console. Crowley took the opportunity to move towards the microphone. He pressed and held the button he had seen the radiologist push, his other hand wrapping around the microphone more tightly than was absolutely necessary. With a hasty glance at Rashid, still preoccupied, the demon said quickly into the microphone, “You really okay, Zira?”

Rashid cast him a glance but made no move to drag Crowley away from the microphone, as he had feared.

From the speakers there was a faint huff of laughter. “Yes, my dear.”

Crowley felt only marginally reassured. “I’ll be right here the whole time,” he said into the microphone. He debated how to phrase what he wanted to say next. “Keeping an eye on things.”

There was a pause and a crackle of static on the speakers. “You do that. Let me know if anything’s up.”

“Will do,” Crowley said, forcing himself to loosen his convulsive grip on the microphone. “Okay, then. Shout if you need anything.” The demon forcibly took a step away from the microphone, removing his finger from the button and releasing the microphone stem.

A moment later Rashid shuffled back over to the microphone. “Now, you’re going to be hearing some snapping noises soon, that’s perfectly normal…” The radiologist walked Aziraphale through what to expect again, and then told him that they were about to start in earnest. “This will take about fifty minutes,” Rashid said. “Try to relax and not move too much. I’ll pipe some music in.”

“All right,” Aziraphale’s voice crackled from the speakers. There was a brief pause, and then the angel added, “And tell Crowley to stop worrying; I can feel him at it from in here.”

Rashid chuckled. “I’ll try to calm him down. Okay, here comes the music. I’ll let you know when the fifty minutes are over.” The radiologist flipped a switch on the console and turned a dial. He made a couple more adjustments and then peered at a small screen and up through the window. 

Crowley followed his gaze through the window, but nothing appeared to be happening. The screen on the console, on the other hand, lit up and started displaying a list of numbers.

Rashid tweaked a couple dials, dragged a chair over to where he had a better view out the window, and sagged down onto it. “And now we wait.” He gestured to another chair in the corner. “Take a seat. It’ll be a while.” The radiologist glanced at his watch as though to emphasise his words.

Crowley kept an eye on the window as he pulled the chair closer and sat down nervously.

“So,” Rashid said, spinning his chair a few inches back and forth as he regarded the demon. “How do you two know each other?”

Crowley stared at him blankly for a few seconds. He opened his mouth to say that they were brothers (which was true enough), realised the apparent age gap between them now rendered that rather unlikely, and stammered out a, “We’re cousins.”

Rashid accepted the lie easily enough, nodding thoughtfully. “You seem to get along very well. My cousins and I always fight.” The radiologist laughed a little. “Family, you know?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, considered the fact that Above and Below were always at odds despite the fact that they’d all been angels originally, and added another, “yeah,” firmer this time. “But Azir—Ziraphale and I, we’ve known each other for a long time.”

Rashid nodded. “I get that. Still, it’s nice to see that someone came with him. Some of the patients needing scans just come by themselves. It’s quite sad.”

Crowley grunted agreement and returned his gaze to the window, where Aziraphale’s feet were the only assurance he had that the angel was still with him. 

Rashid followed his gaze and seemed to realise that Crowley wasn’t all that interested in talking. The radiologist reached over and fished a book out of some space under the console, crossed his legs leisurely in front of him, flipped to the bookmark, settled into a more comfortable position, and started reading.

Crowley kept his eyes fixed on the window, feeling his anxiety fade as the minutes passed and Aziraphale’s feet did nothing more than absently tap out some unheard rhythm every now and then. Every few minutes he would tear his eyes from the window long enough to glance around the room, feeling for any divine or diabolical influence. Everything seemed quiet.

The fifty minutes inched by, Rashid yawning occasionally as he flipped through his book. At last, something on the console gave a little beep. The radiologist glanced up, moved his bookmark to his current spot, tucked the book back away, and tapped out a couple of commands on the console. Then he leaned over to the microphone, pressed the button, and said, “All right, Mr Ziraphale, we’re all done. Good job. We’ll be right there to get you out.”

Crowley stood up and was right on Rashid’s heels as he pushed open the door and walked over to the MRI chamber. He carefully wheeled the table out, and Crowley was relieved when Aziraphale said cheerfully, “See, my dear, that wasn’t so bad.”

The radiologist removed the padded straps and helped the angel off the table. 

“It was bloody boring in there, though, I’ll give it that,” Aziraphale said in an undertone to Crowley as they walked back into the other room.

“You can get changed back into your regular clothes now,” Rashid said as he closed the door behind them. “And then I’ll show you back to the lobby. It can get a bit twisty back here.”

Aziraphale vanished into the lavatory and emerged a couple minutes later, complete with spectacles and the horrendous Hawaiian shirt he was using as a disguise. He handed the neatly folded gown back to the radiologist.

“Excellent,” Rashid said, setting the gown down on the console and gesturing towards the door. “The results will be in in a couple days,” he explained as he led them back down the hallway. “I think we’re to send them to a Dr Griffiths, does that sound familiar? In London?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Crowley said.

“We’ll get that all done for you, then,” he said as they emerged back into the waiting room. “Can you find your way back from here?”

Crowley nodded.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure,” Rashid said, shaking their hands again. “I hope you have a safe drive.”

Aziraphale thanked him and soon the two of them were making their way towards where the demon had parked Bert’s car.

Crowley kept as sharp a lookout on the way back to Midfarthing as he had on the way to Bristol, but the drive was just as uneventful. Still, he let out a relieved sigh when he felt the protective aura of Adam’s spell settle over them. 

Crowley pulled the car right up into Bert’s drive and went inside to thank the barman and return his keys. Bert asked how it had gone; Crowley explained that they wouldn’t know for a couple of days. All the same, the barman looked relieved that Crowley had taken Aziraphale to see a professional. The demon promised to fill him in on the details later. He was halfway out the door before he turned back, dug in his pocket, and handed Bert a twenty pound note to cover the petrol. 

He collected Aziraphale in the drive and they were halfway home before Crowley registered that he would never even have considered doing such a thing as reimbursing for petrol ten years ago.


	16. Tick, Tock

Three days later, Dr Griffiths returned to their little cottage. This time, when she placed her briefcase on the table and lifted the lid, it was full of greyscale printouts of what looked to be lateral slices of a human brain.

Crowley and Aziraphale sat next to each other on one side of the table as she laid out six photographs in front of them. Each showed an oval of thick, light grey squiggles surrounded by inky blackness. The six were all slightly different, and the first and last were significantly smaller in diameter than the central four.

“These are images of a healthy brain, in six horizontal slices,” Dr Griffiths explained. “Going from the top of the brain,” here she indicated the first photograph, “to the bottom.” She pointed to the last photograph. “Notice how the brain matter is very full, and extends all the way to this line here, just inside the skull.” She swept a finger along the edge of one of the photographs and looked at them for understanding.

Crowley, not really sure what he was supposed to be looking at, nodded anyway.

She removed four of the photographs and swept the other two to the side of the table. Then she laid out six more printouts. “These are Mr Ziraphale’s. Six images, same placement and location as the others I showed you.”

Crowley and Aziraphale both leaned forward, studying the photographs. Crowley realised what was wrong immediately—he glanced between the two images of the healthy brain and Aziraphale’s. He felt a heavy weight settle onto his shoulders.

“This area back here,” Dr Griffiths said, indicating the rear portion of Aziraphale’s brain on one of the printouts, “is where the problem is. See how the brain matter has reduced in size, and these lines,” she indicated the areas where the darkness of the background speared between the squiggles of brain matter, “penetrate much further than they do in the healthy brain.”

Crowley swallowed, looking between the images nervously. Beside him, Aziraphale had gone very still. 

The demon found his voice first. “So what…what does this mean?” he asked.

Dr Griffiths looked down at the images and then up at Aziraphale. “From the scans and the symptoms, I can diagnose Mr Ziraphale with Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s primarily affects the rear of the brain, as we can see here,” she said, pointing again to the damning images laid out on the table. “And that causes problems primarily with memory and motor skills.”

Crowley just stared at the photographs. Then he looked back up at the doctor, who was watching them calmly, though there was kindness in her dark eyes.

“What—what’s going to happen?” Crowley asked at last, feeling his voice rasping in his throat.

“It’s a little different for everyone,” she said, “But I can give you a general idea.” 

Aziraphale looked up at her, and Crowley could see the tension in his shoulders as though he were bracing himself for a physical blow. 

“As you’ve noticed,” Dr Griffiths began, “it begins with memory loss. Sometimes it’s long-term memory that goes first, sometimes short-term. For some people it’s muscle memory, and the sort of things that you do automatically, because you’ve learned them so well. That’s things like tying a tie or making tea, but it can also affect more complex actions, like driving. Ordinary everyday tasks can become challenging. Things get mixed up, or misplaced, and the brain doesn’t quite know what to do with that. 

“The next thing to go is fine motor skills. This may affect handwriting, or it may be difficult to button a shirt. Personal grooming often gets forgotten, and patients have been known to get lost and wander off.” Dr Griffiths paused, looking between them. 

“From this point on, a lot of things might happen. Some patients retreat into their own minds. Others stay sharp until the end. But there will be more physical effects as time passes. Again, this varies widely from patient to patient, but common symptoms at this stage include mood swings, insomnia, loss of motivation, and depression.” The doctor looked seriously between the two of them.

Crowley, struggling to take it all in, found a spark of humour in his demonic soul. “Well, you make it sound like it’s going to kill him.”

Dr Griffiths’ face remained impassive. “It does vary from patient to patient,” she said, “but you should know that Alzheimer’s _is_ a fatal disease.”

Crowley felt all the air flee his lungs, leaving him gasping on nothing. Under the table, something touched his arm and a moment later Aziraphale’s hand locked around the demon’s wrist, pressing hard enough to bruise.

Crowley found some air and managed a stammered, “How—how long?”

“Don’t—” Aziraphale began, the first thing he’d said since Dr Griffiths had laid the photographs out on the table.

“It’s impossible to say,” the doctor said. “The disease is really very poorly understood, and if affects different people in different ways.”

“But are we talking, like—like three years, or thirty?” Crowley asked, feeling a stirring of panic join his shock. _He_ had brought Aziraphale to Fall, _he_ had brought this whole situation to bear—

“I can’t give a very definitive figure,” Dr Griffiths said, “and I’m not very comfortable giving a number at all, because it does affect different people so differently.” She looked down at the scans. “But from what I’ve seen, and how far along the disease has progressed—and if you’re right in saying the symptoms started three or four years ago—I would say anywhere between three and ten years. Maybe less. Maybe more. It really is impossible to tell, but I’ve only rarely seen patients continue past twelve years after diagnosis.”

Aziraphale’s grip on his wrist was cutting off the demon’s circulation to his hand, but Crowley didn’t register the pain. _Three to ten years._

The first coherent thought across the demon’s mind was that he had been promised forty.

Next to him, Aziraphale seemed to be having trouble breathing.

“Is there anything we can—you know—do about it?” Crowley managed at last, giving the angel a worried look.

Dr Griffiths shook her head. “We don’t understand well enough how it works yet. There are some experimental drugs and treatments, but none have gained any real traction. There’re hopes of a cure in the next ten, maybe fifteen years…but we just don’t know. I can prescribe Aricept—that’s a drug that treats the symptoms—but it won’t be able to stop the disease from progressing.”

Crowley’s mind was in overdrive, skipping ahead five, ten years, to Aziraphale’s chair, sitting empty; his bookshelves, blank and vacant; and just Crowley, standing in the centre of the living room, all alone, a vast emptiness opening up within him—

Crowley’s hand, the one not being strangled by Aziraphale’s vice-like grip, reached for the angel and locked itself desperately around his sleeve.

“It really does vary enormously from person to person,” Dr Griffiths said again, “and a cure may come along very soon, if we’re lucky.” She looked between the pair of them, both very pale now. She drew from her briefcase a bundle of stapled papers a quarter of an inch thick and laid it on the table. “This is a handbook for Alzheimer’s,” she said. “I suggest you both read it—it lays out the progression of the disease, as well as we understand it. It also lists a number of support groups in your area you can visit.” She started pulling the brain scans back towards her. “I advise you to continue doing things you enjoy,” she said, directing this towards Aziraphale. “Try to keep an open mind. A lot can be discovered in the medical field in a short number of years.”

Dr Griffiths shuffled the brain scans together and placed them in the briefcase, closing it with a snap and glancing at her watch. “I’m afraid I need to go; I have a plane to catch. My office will be in touch if you need anything.” She stood, pulling her briefcase off the table. Crowley followed her movements with uninterested eyes. “I _am_ sorry,” she said, and there was sincerity in her voice.

She was halfway to the door before Crowley realised he should see her out. He stood up and started towards the door, but Aziraphale refused to release his wrist and the demon didn’t make it very far.

She left without another word, and Crowley just stood there for a long moment, listening to the ringing silence. After a couple of seconds Aziraphale seemed to realise that he was crushing Crowley’s wrist and abruptly let go.

“Sorry,” the angel said.

Crowley dragged his eyes away from the door and back to Aziraphale. His legs suddenly felt very wobbly and he sank back onto his chair. His wrist was throbbing violently, flush with sudden heat, but Crowley didn’t so much as spare it a glance.

The demon stared at the empty surface of the table, where mere moments ago Aziraphale’s fate had been so clinically laid out. He didn’t understand how this had happened.

He felt Aziraphale’s touch on his wrist again, light this time. He flinched reflexively, the pain drawing him back a little. The angel brought his hand up to the top of the table. “You should heal that,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley turned to look at the angel. He didn’t know how he should feel: incredulous, surprised, horrified? Aziraphale’s eyes were surprisingly—impossibly—level.

“Please,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley blinked at him and looked down at his hand. There was a strong red mark already beginning to raise around his wrist, as though he’d been bound. His hand was a markedly paler colour than the rest of his arm, and throbbed viciously, sending showers of tingles up his arm. He barely felt it. 

“Zira,” he began, shakily.

“Please,” Aziraphale said again, touching his shoulder gently. “Heal it. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Crowley could only look at him. _I didn’t mean to hurt you either_ , he thought wretchedly. _I didn’t mean to make you Fall. I didn’t mean for this to happen._

But Aziraphale was still looking at him, and his hand was ever so light on the demon’s shoulder, and he looked as pained as Crowley felt.

Crowley looked back down at his hand and allowed himself to drag some power from within and send it in the direction of his hand. The hot throbbing immediately tapered off, and he watched uninterestedly as the red mark lightened and vanished from his wrist, his hand warming up a tone or two in colour.

Aziraphale leaned towards Crowley and tilted the side of his head against the demon’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said, sounding suddenly very tired.

They stayed that way for a while, long enough for their breathing to sync, and Crowley didn’t know how they would ever move from that position, how they could ever get up and continue their lives. It was just so unreal. 

Then Crowley felt himself getting rather peckish. He immediately felt ashamed—what right did he have to be feeling hungry, for his body to demand he continue on when Aziraphale’s had given up on him so completely?—but not long after that he heard the angel’s stomach grumble loudly. And he realised that Aziraphale was still here, leaning lightly against him, very real and solid—Crowley hadn’t lost him yet.

The demon cleared his throat awkwardly. “Dinner?” he asked.

Aziraphale pulled away from him and glanced mournfully in the direction of the kitchen. “I was supposed to have put the chicken on…” the angel glanced at his watch, “an hour ago.”

Crowley stood up slowly, feeling his sore muscles protest the moment. “No matter,” he said. “We can have chicken tomorrow.” He cast his eyes around the cupboards and opened one hopefully. “How about something out of a box?”

 

~~***~~

 

In the morning, it was like the previous day had been a dream. Crowley slept late and when he made his way downstairs, he found Aziraphale weeding the flowerbeds, whistling to himself.

Crowley paused near the open door, looking down at the angel. It was a beautiful day. 

Aziraphale heard his arrival and glanced up at him. “Good morning, my dear,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t suppose you’d like to help?” He indicated the impeccably weeded flowerbeds.

Crowley felt his mouth twitch upwards into a wry smile. “You know I prefer my plants green with envy. Well, and fear. A good bout of fear makes every plant grow better, in my opinion.”

Aziraphale scowled at him, but there was no real anger in the act. “Don’t terrorise my irises,” he said. “Now shoo, if you know what’s good for you. Otherwise I’m sure I can find some shrub that needs pruning.”

Crowley grinned at the empty threat—Aziraphale would never let him touch his perfectly trimmed shrubs, not with _his_ record of plants’ rights violations—but retreated into the house nonetheless. 

Neither of them worked that day, and neither of them brought up the events of the previous afternoon. It was one of the days where Aziraphale seemed to be back to his old self. He didn’t forget a single thing. Everything was as it had been before, in that somehow perfect, idealised past, before they had learned that the angel’s days were numbered even shorter than they’d been hoping. Crowley couldn’t bring himself to break the spell—on the contrary, he wanted to stay here forever, trapped in this little bubble of happiness they had achieved among the horror of the world.

And then the day ended. The next was worse—Crowley and Aziraphale both went to work, and Aziraphale made it home first. When Crowley returned just in time for dinner, it was to find that Aziraphale had accidentally set the cooker to the wrong temperature and burned their dinner. For a moment the angel looked to be on the edge of tears—then he just seemed to shut down. He set about microwaving some leftover pasta they had instead, and when Crowley tried to help he got snapped at and told to sit down. The demon tried to cheer him up with some light humour, which worked eventually, but though it successfully drained Aziraphale of anger, it was replaced with a quiet melancholy. Aziraphale only ate half of his dinner and went straight to bed. Crowley stayed up late, worried.

The day after was worse still. Crowley’s work at the bank got on his nerves and he had to stay late, and when he finally made it home, slightly wet from the light, on-and-off drizzle, his mood was thoroughly ruined. 

When he stepped into the little cottage, shivering and feeling a drop of icy rainwater slide down under his collar, Aziraphale was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a note in the angel’s slightly shaky handwriting on the table saying that Faye Uphill had invited him over for tea, and the demon was welcome to join them after work if he wanted, else he’d be back later in time for dinner. Crowley scowled at the note and crumpled it up, glaring over his shoulder at the bleak drizzle. It really wasn’t raining all that hard, all things considered, but the demon had no desire to leave the cottage for a good long while.

He flopped down moodily on the sofa, trying to ignore the cold draft that was leaking past him. This autumn was turning out to be more of a drizzling winter than anything else.

The clock on the wall thrummed softly, pendulum swinging back and forth lazily. Crowley stared into the ashes of the fireplace, uncomfortably wet and cold. He hadn't bothered to turn the light on when he’d walked in.

He felt wound up from work still, and sitting there chilled on the sofa in the dark, staring at the grate, he felt suddenly very alone.

_Tick, tock,_ went the antique clock Aziraphale loved so much.

Crowley thought about the angel, warm and comfortable in someone else’s sitting room, perhaps eating biscuits or sipping some Earl Grey. 

He looked at the fireplace, where the white ashes sat motionless and dead.

_Tick, tock_ , went the clock, deep and soft.

It sounded like a countdown.

_Three to ten years_ , Crowley thought, a spike of anger flaring through him at the thought. _Three to ten bloody years, and then what? What sort of a future is left for_ me?

_Tick, tock_. 

Crowley glared at the clock, feeling himself warm as anger rolled through him. The clock was marking out the seconds left of Aziraphale’s life, he knew suddenly. Counting the heartbeats left before the angel would be gone forever.

_Three to ten years_.

“Stop it!” Crowley shouted suddenly, sitting bolt upright, eyes burning as he glared at the clock, where the hands ticked along incessantly. “Just—just stop it!”

_Tick, tock_.

Crowley stood up abruptly, feeling considerably more demonic than he had in years as a wave of rage broke over him. He felt like he had fallen over the edge of something, but didn’t stop to think what. All he wanted was for that bloody clock to stop, to cease in any way possible that regimented flow of time that was killing his angel.

Crowley advanced quickly on the clock and slammed the side of his fist against the front panel hard enough to shatter the glass and rattle the wall. The pain in his hand went straight to his head, heightening his anger. _“Stop it, do you hear?”_ Crowley shouted at the clock, voice cracking halfway through. “Jussst—just shut up!”

_Tick, tock_ , the clock taunted him as its second hand clicked to the next notch. _You cannot stop time._

“The hell I can’t,” Crowley growled, and tore the clock from the wall.

_Tick_ , said the clock, and lost its _tock_ as the pendulum weaved back and forth uncertainly.

Crowley shook the clock violently, seized by a deep-rooted anger. “I won’t do it!” the demon shouted at it. “I won’t—I won’t bloody _lose him!”_

The clock didn’t respond.

“I just—I _won’t!”_ Crowley shouted, voice breaking again. “I won’t.”

He’d been holding the clock too still for too long; the pendulum had started swinging again. _Tick._

“No!” Crowley shouted, staring at the second hand as though it were personally responsible for everything that had happened.

_Tock_.

Crowley smashed the clock. It slammed into the wall with a resounding crash, sending cracks spiderwebbing across the plaster. The clock fell and collided with the floor like a bag of bricks, accompanied by the sounds of wood and metal and glass coming unmoored. There was a pounding in the demon’s head, and it wasn't done with him yet.

He advanced on the ruined clock, feeling his mouth twitch in anger. He held himself there for a moment, staring down at it, trembling.

Then he viciously kicked the largest section of the clock’s broken wooden casing as hard as he could, putting his whole body into the effort. He braced his hands on the wall and kicked again, and again and again and again, until he was breathless and screaming, foot pounding in rhythm to his heart. 

He kicked the ruins of the clock again, and then one more time, and forced himself to stop. He was shaking, palms sweaty as they pressed against the freshly cracked wall of the cottage.

His breath hitched once, twice, and his eyes burned, but no tears presented themselves. 

Apart from his own shaky breathing, there was silence. The clock was no longer ticking, but time was still passing, running over him like waves, pushing him inexorably in a direction he didn’t want to go. Pushing him towards the end.

Crowley let out a broken, helpless sob and felt his legs go weak. He sank onto the floor, feeling the anger drain out of him, leaving him with only a huge empty void.

Aziraphale becoming mortal had never been a part of any plan Crowley had signed off on. But it had happened, and the repercussions were happening _now._

_Three to ten years_. Somehow, it had all gone wrong.

And as Crowley sat there, hand and foot smarting, the ruins of the clock Aziraphale loved so dearly lying next to him in a mess of wood and glass and bronze, he wished for the first time in his very long life that he could well and truly weep.

Crowley had only sat there for a minute or two, shaking with tearless sobs and cradling his right hand, which was bleeding and studded with bits of broken glass, when he heard the door open.

The demon immediately hiccuped and tried to pull himself together, but there was little he could do on that front.

“Crowley!” That was the angel, of course. Crowley had anticipated the shock in his voice, but was more than a little surprised to hear the worry accompanying it.

“Sssorry,” Crowley slurred, wincing at the hiss in his voice but too worn out to try to disguise it.

He heard Aziraphale take a couple of steps toward him and then stop, presumably having noticed the destroyed clock.

“Crowley.” That was Aziraphale again, sounding on the verge of tears now.

“I’m s—sssorry,” Crowley said again, hiccuping and keeping his eyes downcast, looking wretchedly at the ruins of one of the angel’s most prized possessions.

He heard Aziraphale finish crossing the distance to him and flinched away instinctively, knowing he had done wrong and expecting to be punished.

But the angel only knelt down next to him. Crowley felt a light hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, my _dear,”_ Aziraphale said, and the demon couldn’t understand how his voice could be so kind. “Use your magic, please.”

Crowley sniffed miserably and waved his unhurt hand vaguely in the direction of the broken remains of the clock. The pieces swirled through the air and fit themselves back together flawlessly. A moment later the clock leaned itself gently against the suddenly unblemished wall, pristine.

He thought he heard Aziraphale laugh softly. “Not the _clock,_ my dear, your _hand.”_

Crowley blinked and looked up at the angel, confusion crossing his face.

Aziraphale wasn’t even looking at the clock; he was gazing instead at the demon with such empathy as he hadn’t seen since the angel had Fallen.

“Please.”

Crowley blinked and looked down at his hand, realising that he hadn’t even considered healing himself. He swallowed and channeled enough of his power into both his battered hand and foot to stop the throbbing. Several shards of glass slipped off his palm and tumbled to the ground with light tinkles.

“There,” Aziraphale said, and gave his back a light rub. 

Crowley let out a shaking breath and closed his eyes, marshalling his breathing and heartbeat, calming himself.

Aziraphale stayed beside him, hand now resting lightly on his upper back for support. Crowley waited for the angel to ask him what was wrong, but Aziraphale remained silent. He already knew.

When Aziraphale made no move to get up and get on with their lives, hand remaining steady on Crowley’s back, the demon spoke.

“Forty years,” he whispered, thinking back wretchedly to the night on the pier, after he and Aziraphale had argued, when he had decided to stick it out with the angel. He opened his eyes and stared down at his hands, now whole and unblemished. “We were promised forty years.”

Beside him Aziraphale sighed, but the sound wasn’t exasperated. “No, we weren’t.”

Crowley sniffled miserably.

“We knew this was coming, Crowley,” Aziraphale said kindly. “It just came sooner rather than later.”

“What did?” the demon asked stubbornly, not wanting to hear the answer.

Aziraphale’s reply was steady; calm, even. “Death.”

Crowley felt himself shaking his head, heart fluttering with fear. “No.”

Aziraphale’s hand moved to Crowley’s far shoulder, and he gave the demon a tight, sideways squeeze. “I’m afraid so, my dear.” 

Crowley kept his eyes fixed on his hands, refusing to look up, refusing to look the angel in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said softly. “I really am. But I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Crowley sniffed angrily and looked up at last, but not at the angel. “No,” he said.

Aziraphale sighed. “Crowley—”

“No,” Crowley said again, firmer this time. He swallowed and shifted position, preparing to stand up. Aziraphale slid his arm away from its place around the demon’s shoulders. Crowley staggered to his feet, and Aziraphale followed him warily.

“No, we’re going to unFall you,” Crowley said, latching onto this last way out like a drowning man clutching a lifeline. “I’m going to find some way to unFall you, and you’re going to be—be an angel again, and you’re going to be fine.” He felt his resolve strengthen even as he said the words.

Beside him, Aziraphale looked uncertain. “My dear—”

“No,” Crowley cut him off. Aziraphale was looking at him with an expression somewhere between sorrow and hurt. Crowley felt his own features soften. “Look,” he said, stepping forward and putting a hand on the angel’s shoulder. Aziraphale looked suddenly both very old and very tired, though he met Crowley’s gaze with the same endless, crystal blue eyes he always had, for six millennia.

“At least let me try,” Crowley pleaded, voice soft. “Let me try.”

Aziraphale looked down but nodded all the same.

Crowley exhaled shakily, relieved that he seemed to have the angel’s cooperation. He closed his eyes for a moment, just feeling Aziraphale’s shoulder very solid beneath his hand and the centimetre of wool separating them.

Then Aziraphale said, “How about some tea?” and Crowley couldn’t suppress a chuckle.

"Yeah, angel. Tea would be good."


	17. An Historical Narrative

Two months later Crowley was no closer to figuring out how to restore a Fallen angel to divinity, and it ate away at him. 

He had discreetly arranged for another handful of books concerning the supernatural to be delivered to him, taking bigger risks this time with who he trusted information with. He was extra careful with the pseudonyms he used, never mentioned what he wanted the books for, and had them shipped back and forth between several unsuspecting human vendors before having them posted to Bert (where he then plucked them out of the barman's postbox on his morning walk before he could realise they were even there), but it was still more latitude where Aziraphale’s safety was concerned than the demon was strictly comfortable with.

It turned out to be all for naught, as none of the books seemed to have the foggiest idea how to unFall anyone from anywhere. Even the promising ones with titles like _The Inner Workings of Angelicy_ and _An Historical Narrative of Our Lord Lucifer’s Fall_ shed no light on the subject. 

Aziraphale had perked up when he saw the almost glowing, heavenly, satin-bound _Inner Workings_ , though he hadn’t been surprised when Crowley finished his meticulous reading of it and found nothing useful.

“I’m fairly certain no one’s ever Fallen to human before, my dear,” the angel said one cloudy afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table and sipping his tea calmly. “I don’t see how anyone would have written down how to undo it if no one had done it yet.”

“That’s not what I’m looking for,” Crowley said, gingerly turning the scorched pages of _An Historical Narrative_. The book looked like it had been bound in human skin and smelled to high heaven, pardon the language.

Aziraphale stirred his tea calmly, waiting for the demon to elaborate.

“Right now I’m just trying to figure out _why_ you Fell. And why to human. Maybe there’s a logical reversal once we know what exactly you did that tied their harp strings into such knots in the first place.” The demon skimmed a page of the cramped, red-inked words, glanced at the gruesome image on the adjacent page, and turned to the next spread.

“Well, presumably it was because I saved you,” Aziraphale said, with a wan smile.

Crowley glanced up at the angel and then back down at the scorched volume. “Yes, but what was your _charge?”_ he clarified. “That was your _crime_ , but if you were dragged in front of God’s metaphorical tribunal, what was the _reasoning_ behind making you Fall, and making you human instead of a demon?”

Aziraphale fell silent. The only sound was a faint screaming and scratching coming from the blood-splattered book in front of Crowley. “That’s a good way to look at it,” the angel said thoughtfully after a long while.

“Thanks,” Crowley said. “And I’m starting by trying to figure out why Lucifer Fell—why _I_ Fell, and all the rest of the demons—because whatever’s the common denominator between us is the factor that makes an angel Fall to demon, and whatever that is isn’t what happened to you.”

Aziraphale squinted at him over his teacup. “Lucifer Fell because of pride,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, but pride in _what?”_

Aziraphale was frowning at him now, Crowley saw as he glanced up at the angel and then back to the book.

“Pride in himself,” Aziraphale said after a moment. “He thought he knew better than…you know, _Him_. Thought he _was_ better than Him.” The capitalisation was audible in the angel’s voice.

Crowley made a sound of agreement, squinting at the tight, dark red script. He wondered absently if it was written in blood.

“But, I mean, why are you asking _me?”_ Aziraphale asked, a little bemused. “You were there—you Fell with him.”

Crowley snorted. “What, you think I was Lucifer’s right-hand man or something?”

Aziraphale looked immediately apologetic. “Of course not, my dear. I just mean—”

“I know what you mean.” Crowley looked up at the angel. “Honestly, I don’t know why I Fell. Seems like it was easier back then. Angels nowadays can get away with worse than anything I ever did back in the day. I mean—” Crowley paused, thinking back. “You remember Lucifer, right?”

Aziraphale smiled at him sadly. “Not as well as I should. Better than I like.”

Crowley shot the angel a glance. “Well, he was charismatic,” the demon explained. “He was the only angel on the block who would stand up to Dad. Great orator, too, really.” Crowley paused to scratch his ear absently. “And what he said made sense. Dad had just created the world, and what was His order to us? Look after the humans. Of all the creatures—from birds to fish to—to— _wildebeest_ —He chose _man._ And then there was that whole hoo-ha about being made in His image—as if He hadn’t made the _angels_ in His image as well.”

Aziraphale was staring at him in horror. “Crowley, that’s blasphemy!”

Crowley gave the angel a sly grin. “Well, of course it is!” 

When the angel continued to look mortified, Crowley added in exasperation, “Well, what do you think is going to happen? I’m already a demon; I can hardly Fall _again.”_

Aziraphale looked moderately appeased. “I suppose not.”

“Yeah,” said Crowley. “Well, anyway, I’m not saying I agree with it anymore. Frankly, humans are probably the best of the lot, anyway. It’s not like _they_ tried to start the Apocalypse.”

Aziraphale made a sound of agreement and nervously took a sip of his tea.

“Anyway,” Crowley said, returning to his train of thought, “Lucifer. He talked a big game. What was Dad thinking, picking humanity over _us?_ So when he said we didn’t have to listen to Him anymore, it all sounded pretty good, right? We could rebel, prove that we were more worthy than humanity. Then of course He caught on to what was going on—or maybe He started it all in the first place, who knows, ineffability and all that—and He sent Michael to deal with us.” The demon shrugged, trying to express nonchalance at what had easily been one of the worst days of his life for a millennium or two. 

“Michael struck Lucifer down, and the Heavenly Host went after the rest of us.” Crowley failed to suppress a shiver at the memory. Aziraphale was transfixed, staring at the demon in horror. “I mean, not _me_ , specifically. It took a couple of days to round all of us up. Our wings had started turning once we all agreed to screw dear old Dad’s plan and follow Lucifer instead. Of course once Lucifer was down for the count I thought it was pretty apparent that we were all going to have our tickets punched—and he was a seraph! And, I mean, we all had mostly black wings at that point. Really makes you stand out in a crowd. Once the groupies started Falling, I decided it was better to jump off than be thrown off. Sneaked away one evening when everyone was looking the other way and took the back way down, taking my own sweet time.” Crowley finished his narrative with a self-indulgent grin, hiding the flutter of guilt he felt at telling the angel something that wasn’t entirely true under practised, well-rehearsed falsehoods. “Sauntered vaguely downwards, one might say.”

“Oh, Crowley, I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale said, sounding stricken.

It took the demon a couple of seconds to try and parse out what Aziraphale was referring to; the elapsed time didn’t help any. Aziraphale had never expressed sympathy at his Fall before; it had been pretty clear he fitted in better Downstairs. “For what, angel?” he asked at last.

“I don’t—I don't remember most of that,” Aziraphale said, looking at him with eyes wide. “I don’t remember the demons Falling—was I—did I—?”

Crowley realised what the angel was getting at and shook his head. “No, you didn’t. Or at least that’s what you told me later. Said you’d had guard duty, keeping Eden safe and all that.”

“Eden,” Aziraphale said, latching onto the word. “The Garden. I remember that.”

“I should hope so,” Crowley said, a tad huffily. “First time we properly met, I think. Ah, back when life was good.” The demon allowed himself a small smile of recollection at the image of the beautiful Garden in his head, everything fresh and new.

“Don’t know if I’d call it _good,”_ Aziraphale said, picking up his teacup and swirling the contents back and forth. “Why do you think I got posted permanently on Earth after Adam and Eve ran off?”

“Because you had done good by mankind already by giving them your sword?” Crowley hazarded.

“Because it was _dangerous,”_ Aziraphale corrected, glaring mildly at Crowley over his teacup. “Because that was where the _demons_ were, and I had messed up already, and was therefore _expendable.”_

Crowley felt himself staring at the angel wordlessly; Aziraphale had never told him that before. For Crowley, it had been because he had done such an exceptional job, it made sense to keep him where his tempting could do some good—er, bad. He had always assumed the same had been true for the angel.

Aziraphale took a sip of tea, untroubled. “Anyway,” he said. “I would say that Lucifer’s crime was blasphemy. Saying he was better than Dad. Leading a rebellion. That sort of thing. So his _charge_ would be, oh, treason or something. Heresy. Take your pick.”

Crowley gathered himself. “Yes,” he said, blinking and looking down at _An Historical Narrative_ , which hissed back at him threateningly. “That sounds about right.”

“So if you’re trying to figure out why _I_ Fell…” Aziraphale continued thoughtfully, “beyond rescuing one of the Adversary—that could be called treason as well, I suppose—well, I did, er, kill many of our brothers. Fratricide, I suppose.”

“But Lucifer did both of those too,” Crowley pointed out, moving his elbows to lean forward over _An Historical Narrative_ but thinking better of it when the book growled at him menacingly. “That’s what I’m confused about. Lucifer killed plenty of angels, but a lot of his followers didn’t, and _they_ still Fell.” _Myself included_ , Crowley added to himself grimly. “So that can’t be it.”

Aziraphale made an ungracious sound. “What, murdering your own brothers isn’t crime enough?”

Crowley frowned at him. “Well, not the crime that matters the most, it appears,” he said. “It could be treason—I mean, they were two very different types of treason.”

Aziraphale looked at him carefully through his spectacles. “That’s true,” he said. “Saving a demon versus leading a rebellion against God.”

“Petty treason versus, er, major treason?” Crowley said. “Sheer quantity of chaos, if nothing else.”

Aziraphale twisted his mouth. “But you said not all of the demons who Fell did anything worse than agreeing with Lucifer. If only those mildly treasonous would Fall to Earth instead of Hell, why did no angels Fall to Earth back in the day?”

Crowley frowned. “Fair point.” He looked back down at _An Historical Narrative_. “I don’t know, angel. Did you do anything else when you were up there that He wouldn’t have approved of?”

Aziraphale frowned right back at the demon. “I don’t know. I lied to Michael and a bunch of other angels to figure out where they were holding you. I may have bribed one.”

Crowley shook his head. “Think big-picture.”

Aziraphale shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know. You were there for most of it—you have any ideas?”

Crowley shook his head, sitting back in his chair and scratching at his ear again. “You think I’d be asking you if I thought I knew myself?”

Aziraphale shrugged politely. “Thought I’d ask.”

“No…” Crowley stared up at the ceiling. “I must be going about this wrong.” He leaned forward again, staring down at the cramped text on the thick volume in front of him. Aziraphale stirred his tea contemplatively.

“Hang on,” Crowley said after a moment’s thought. “So I was trying to figure it out by looking at why you _didn’t_ Fall to demon, but maybe we should look at why you _did_ Fall to human.”

“Hmm.” The angel's expression indicated he thought it was a fair idea.

“Okay,” Crowley said, gathering his thoughts as he leaned forward onto the demonic book, ignoring its angry snarls. “So back to Eden again. That was effectively the Fall of humanity, right? Taking the apple. Getting kicked out of the Garden.”

“Sounds about right,” Aziraphale agreed.

“So what was _their_ crime, their…charge?”

“Disobeying God’s rules,” Aziraphale said immediately. “He told them not to take the apple, and they did.”

“Yes,” Crowley said, turning the scene over in his head, looking for flaws in the angel’s reasoning. He could still see Eve, beautiful but in a rather plain way, eyes wide as Crowley showed her the apple, highlighting its lovely colour and texture.

“So…I don’t know…insubordination? Something like that.”

Something had occurred to Crowley. He looked up at Aziraphale and cocked his head slightly. “Free will. They chose free will.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “I suppose.”

“But that’s what the apple really symbolised,” Crowley explained. “Since Lucifer had just Fallen because he hadn’t followed Dad’s orders, he wanted to see if He’d still like humanity after they’d disobeyed as well. That was what was going around Hell after the deed had been done, in any case.”

Something else was occurring to Crowley, and he sat up in excitement, ignoring the scorch marks on his elbows from where he’d leaned against _An Historical Narrative_. “Wait, wait, back in Heaven, right before you Fell—what’s-his-bucket showed up, tried talking you into turning me over—thanks for that, by the way—and you said something about free will just before you skewered him.”

Aziraphale visibly flinched at Crowley’s unsympathetic rendering of events. “Malachi,” the angel said, sounding quite unhappy. “He was a good angel. He didn’t need to die.”

“Yes, yes, but free will,” Crowley interrupted, feeling that he was on the right track and eager to follow it to its logical conclusion before it slipped from his mind. 

Aziraphale looked a tad irritated but responded anyway, “Yes, I think I might have.”

Crowley sat back in triumph. “There you go! The demons—myself included—all of us that Fell in the beginning—we were all just following Lucifer. We didn’t want to make our own decisions; we just didn’t want to follow Dad’s anymore. Lucifer wasn’t offering us the opportunity to let us make our own decisions, wasn’t offering us _free will_ —he was offering us the choice to follow him instead.”

Aziraphale frowned at him. “Then surely Lucifer exercised free will, even if no one else did? Why didn’t _he_ Fall to human?”

Crowley felt some of the excitement drain out of him. “Ineffability?” he hazarded. “Or because he was the first to Fall? Or because his crime was too big? Oh! Wait. Even better. Maybe even _he_ didn’t really chose free will. He wasn’t really doing what _he_ wanted to do—he just wanted to do the opposite of whatever Dad wanted. He led a _rebellion_ , not a _revolution.”_

Aziraphale was still frowning at him. 

“And before you say something,” Crowley said quickly, “There _is_ a difference. Rebellions just want to topple the current regime. They don’t like what management is doing. _Revolutions,_ on the other hand, show free thinking by their participants. They think they have a _better_ idea of how governing is supposed to work than their current governors do.” Crowley was beginning to get excited again, feeling himself building up momentum. “Lucifer didn't want to _dethrone_ God and replace Him with himself, he just wanted Him to stop doing some of the things He was doing, like choosing humanity over the angels. It’s the difference between spite and independence.” Crowley beamed, impressed by his own logic. Aziraphale was still looking unpersuaded.

“Maybe,” the angel allowed doubtfully after a long moment.

“Well, regardless,” Crowley said, leaning forward onto _An Historical Narrative_ again, “the free will angle makes sense. You chose a path other than Dad’s, and it wasn’t just you pushing in the other direction. Same with Eve. She wasn’t doing it because she wanted to spite Dad; she just wanted the apple because I told her it was very tasty and full of vitamin A.”

The look Aziraphale gave him was nothing short of incredulous.

“Well, maybe there was some other stuff in there,” the demon allowed, “but the point still stands. If free will is the lowest common denominator here, then that’s what makes an angel Fall to human.”

Aziraphale still looked a bit sceptical. “Well, I’m not sure if your reasoning’s all sound,” the angel said. “But the conclusion certainly makes sense, I’ll give you that.”

Crowley beamed. The angel smiled a bit and took another sip of his tea, which was getting rather low.

Crowley opened his mouth to say something else that had just occurred to him and froze. _You chose free will like Eve did when I tempted her,_ he’d been about to say. That was when he realised that, in a way, he had tempted Aziraphale to Fall too. _Damn serpent can’t stop enticing people to Fall_.

_An Historical Narrative_ started smoking dangerously under his elbows, but Crowley didn’t notice.

 

~~***~~

 

“So if you’re so set on this free will thing,” Aziraphale said several days later, when Crowley had worked through the logic a couple more times and insisted it was sound, “how exactly is that supposed to get me to unFall?”

The angel was always full of unhelpful questions like that, Crowley reflected. Here he had had a major breakthrough in the very nature of angels, demons, and humanity, and Aziraphale had done little more than sip a cup of tea. It baffled him sometimes.

“Well,” Crowley posited, walking slowly in front of Aziraphale’s armchair, where the angel was sitting with a book in his lap and spectacles perched strictly on his nose, “if free will made you Fall, maybe you need to…er…no longer have free will?”

Aziraphale looked at the demon sternly over his spectacles. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, my dear. Besides, surely you’ve exhibited as much free will as I have. Look at us now.” The angel swept his hand to indicate the cottage, and the fact that they were both currently hiding there from Above and Below. “And we both decided to try to stop the Apocalypse. That’s free will if it ever existed.”

Crowley frowned and lurched to a stop. It was a valid point. If free will made angels into humans, why didn’t it make demons into humans too?

“Maybe it only works on angels?” he offered weakly. “And, er, newly created humans?”

“Still doesn’t explain why rescuing you counted as free will when standing up to Lucifer himself didn’t,” Aziraphale pointed out.

Crowley scowled at the floor.

“There could be another component, maybe?” the angel hazarded. “Maybe free will plus something else?”

Crowley looked over at the angel. 

“I did kill an awful lot of our brothers,” Aziraphale said, sounding rather ashamed. 

“Maybe just leaning towards free will isn’t enough,” Crowley suggested, picking up what the angel was putting down. “Maybe you need to really hit it on the head with an act that would render you totally not-angel-material. A catalyst.”

“It would make sense,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley started pacing again, turning at the sofa to walk back towards where the antique clock hung again on the wall, though it was considerably quieter than it had been before. “That would explain why I didn’t, er, half-unFall? Turn up human, in any case,” Crowley said. “I never did anything super angelic, or non-demonic at least. Nothing on par with, er, murder.”

Aziraphale looked distressed again. 

“Okay, so free will plus a catalyst to throw you out of Above’s good graces,” Crowley summarised, turning on his heel and pacing back in the other direction. “If that’s what made you Fall, then we still need to maybe get rid of free will, or else find a way to reverse the catalyst. Or both.”

Aziraphale looked at Crowley sadly. “I don’t think we can bring the dead back to life, my dear.”

Crowley continued pacing, the fingers of one hand tapping fervently against the back of his other. 

“And they died while in Heaven,” Aziraphale added from his chair, watching the demon pace back and forth, “so there’s no way they’re still alive.”

“Maybe it doesn’t need to be so literal,” Crowley said, a little desperately. “Plenty of crimes can’t be undone. Arson, murder, adultery, that sort of thing. They are irreversible. The only thing that can be done is—” Crowley broke off abruptly, jolting to a halt.

Aziraphale watched him, a distinctly worried look appearing on his face. “What is it?” the angel asked, a little hesitantly, as if he didn’t want to know.

Crowley swivelled on his heel so he was facing Aziraphale. “The only thing that can be done,” Crowley repeated, raising his hands as though to emphasise his big reveal, “is to _repent.”_ The demon beamed.

Aziraphale frowned, unimpressed. Crowley felt his enthusiasm flag (the angel had that effect), but kept the broad smile on his face. He pointed to the kitchen table, where they had leaned together towards the demon's mobile while Crowley wrote down four short lines from a very old book.

“‘To reverse the Act of Falling,’” Crowley quoted, voice heavy with significance, “‘One needs feel but _true remorse.’”_

Aziraphale looked a little sick.

“It’s back to the same thing, Zira!” Crowley said, delighted and not understanding the angel’s lack thereof. “Repentance. Remorse. Come on. You didn’t believe Agnes when she went and _wrote it down_ for you, but would you believe her now that I’ve figured it out independently? How many more big flashing red arrows do you need?”

Aziraphale looked down at his book. “I told you,” the angel said. “If I have to repent to unFall, then I don’t want to.”

Crowley felt frustration start to come over him, only encouraged by the angel’s stubbornness. “But that was _then,”_ he said, pitching his voice to his most persuasive and attempting to banish his frustration. Getting angry at the angel wouldn’t get him to cooperate. “Before—before we found out what was happening to you.”

Aziraphale looked up at him sharply.

Crowley took a couple of steps towards the angel, raising his hands as though to calm a frightened horse. “Please, angel. I—”

“No,” Aziraphale cut him off, snapping his book shut.

“Zira—”

“I said no.” The angel stood up, ramming his spectacles further up his nose with one hand and hugging the book tightly to his chest with the other. “Now if you’d excuse me…”

The angel swept angrily past Crowley, forcing the demon to actually take a step back to avoid a collision.

“Wait—” Crowley began, starting after him, but the only response was a door slamming.

 

~~***~~

 

The disease tightened its grip on Aziraphale with every passing day. Crowley could see it, could watch it happening even as the angel denied its presence or downplayed its importance.

While still misplacing his spectacles on an every-other-day basis, Aziraphale also began losing his socks, and forgot to comb his hair in the morning more and more often. Sometimes all Crowley had to do was give him a meaningful look and he would remember what he had forgotten to do; other times it would take Crowley correcting the error himself before Aziraphale seemed to register what it was that had gone wrong. The angel’s forgetfulness was growing so inescapable that Crowley felt the need to give Aziraphale a once-over before he left the little cottage for any reason, making sure everything was on straight and sometimes even helping him into his coat when he couldn’t find the sleeves. Watching the angel struggle at such simple, ordinary tasks hurt in a place Crowley had never expected to really feel much of anything.

Dr Griffiths continued visiting, sometimes sending assistants as proxies, carrying out the memory and photograph tests four times a year. Crowley didn’t need to sneak a peek at the ever-present clipboard to know that the angel was getting worse, and he could tell Aziraphale knew it too, from the increasingly nervous way he laughed at his own forgetfulness. During the tests, Crowley never veered from his spot at the angel’s side.

Though Aziraphale seemed capable of forgetting a great range of material, Crowley was extremely grateful that some things it seemed Aziraphale would never lose. He only stumbled over Crowley’s name one more time, and once forgot who Newt and Anathema were, but that was the extent of his loss of what the demon dubbed the “important information.” He routinely swapped around the names of the villagers, forgot the postman even existed, and seemed to have lost great tracts of the last six millennia, but his recall of Eden, the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, and, most importantly, his own Fall, remained impeccable. While Crowley might classify their misadventures in sixteenth-century France as “priceless,” he was willing to admit that they weren’t great building blocks of the angel’s personality. And besides, Crowley reasoned to himself, he was always here to remind Aziraphale of anything he forgot.

The angel continued writing in his slim black journals, working his way back into the past at a furious pace. Sometimes he would skip over pages, leaving himself a note to fill it in when he remembered later, which sometimes happened. Other times, he would ask Crowley to fill in a blank span of time, and would simply write down whatever the demon told him. Sometimes Crowley’s recollection seemed to jog Aziraphale’s memory; other times he was pretty sure the angel’s nodding just meant that he was accepting Crowley’s words as fact. Though Crowley was fairly confident in his own memory, it had never been as sharp as Aziraphale’s, and he had usually been the one asking the angel to recall some obscure tidbit. Having it reversed like this was…unnerving at best. 

Crowley also found himself trusting his own memory increasingly less. When he said he remembered standing on the bow of the English flagship _The Prince Charles_ as the Dutch towed it down the Thames, did he really remember it, or was that just the lie he’d told Hell and later recounted to Aziraphale as one of his most daring accomplishments? Looking back over his past, he saw a lot of victories and few failures, either in his character or his plans, though he knew they must exist. Aziraphale had always been the one ready to dredge up one of his more embarrassing failures during a night of heavy drinking, but now if they got even a little tipsy the angel would just start crying and Crowley would have to break out of his own pleasant buzz to comfort him. He wondered sometimes if the alcohol blurred so many of Aziraphale’s remaining memories that the angel could remember only a few scattered things. The thought was truly terrifying.

Though neither of them had any inclination to share the angel’s diagnosis with the inhabitants of Midfarthing, it soon became impossible to hide that _something_ was wrong. More and more well-meaning villagers started coming up to Crowley when Aziraphale was otherwise engaged, some merely patting him sadly on the shoulder while others nosily wanted to know every detail. Crowley actually hissed at one of the latter group, and had grown so upset at the idea of not only the angel’s life but his death being on display to the prying public that now no one did more than offer him a sympathetic glance from across the room every now and then. 

They also started acting differently towards Aziraphale, something the angel confided to Crowley later that he resented but could understand. “It’s like they expect me to be a blithering mess, or are just waiting for me to keel over at any moment,” Aziraphale said with a trace of bitterness. “But I’m really quite fine most of the time. Things just—just—slip my mind, is all.” He followed this up with a graceless snort. “And they all seem to think I should be turning to religion in my time of need. Father Gilbert keeps quoting bible verses at me whenever I have the misfortune to walk past him.” Crowley laughed aloud at that. It was one of the few times he laughed nowadays.

The months ticked on, and Aziraphale continued to rebuff any attempt Crowley made at bringing up the subject of unFalling him. The demon tried to put it out of his mind, but it was impossible when Aziraphale was so very clearly falling to pieces in front of him. The angel insisted on continuing going to his job and told Crowley he should continue with his as well, though the demon was increasingly less interested in mortgage rates and increasingly more interested in making sure Aziraphale was looked after at all times. He knew the angel hated the idea that he was helpless and needed a chaperone—that was probably why he’d insisted on both of them keeping their jobs in the first place—but Crowley didn’t understand how he was supposed to pretend like nothing had gone wrong when something very clearly _had_. More than once Aziraphale had to be escorted back to their address when he wandered off after work, and after the second time Crowley insisted that he was going to walk the angel to and from work and wherever else he needed to go. Aziraphale, of course, thought this was a complete waste of everyone’s time, and managed to talk him out of it, though Crowley made a point to sync up his schedule with the angel’s whenever he could.

Two years after Dr Griffiths had given them _three to ten years_ , Aziraphale went out to the little flower garden in front of the cottage and planted lilies. Crowley, head full of Agnes’ words and heart hammering with fear, went out in the middle of the night and tore them up with his bare hands until his fingers were covered in earth and he was shaking with exhaustion, every last bulb.

He was not taking any chances.


	18. Cambridge

Crowley became fixated again on unFalling Aziraphale, whatever it took. Things, Crowley decided, had gone on long enough in their present course, and he refused to watch the angel deteriorate any further if there was anything he could do about it.

He decided this late one night, as he stared up at the darkened ceiling and listened to Aziraphale’s breathing from the next room, a little hoarser with age and louder than it used to be. The demon wound his fingers in the sheets and swore to himself that he would not let this go on any longer. He was stretched to breaking, nerves shot as he worried about Aziraphale night and day. There just needed to be a faint break in the angel’s breathing, and then Crowley might wake up in the morning to find Aziraphale gone forever. 

It had been three years now. That meant any day was as good as the next. Any day could be the angel’s last.

And Crowley wasn’t about to let that happen.

The demon read through all the books he had collected again, cover to cover, word by word, and considered every possible meaning of Agnes’ four lines that he could come up with. He worked his way through the logic of free will plus a catalyst, and found no better explanation. 

Then, after Aziraphale had returned from work one windy afternoon, Crowley cornered him, all but forcing him to sit in his chair as the demon took up a position standing nearby, not so different from the last conversation they had had on the subject.

“What is it?” Aziraphale asked, sounding less than pleased as he studied the harsh set of the demon’s jaw. His voice took on a bitter, frustrated note. “What have I forgotten this time?”

Crowley just stood there for a moment, staring at some point just over the angel’s shoulder, trying to decide how to begin.

“Oh, no,” Aziraphale said, voice downturning. “Not this again. I won’t do it, Crowley.”

Crowley felt his own irritation bubble up. “And why bloody well not?” he growled. 

“You know why,” Aziraphale snapped. “I refuse.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Crowley shot back. “You’re _dying_ , Zira. It’s time to abandon principle. Do what you have to do.”

Aziraphale bristled. “I don’t _have_ to do anything,” he said coldly, folding his arms.

Crowley hissed at him. Why did the angel have to be so _stubborn?_ “You’re not thinking,” he accused, trying and failing to keep the anger out of his voice. “Do the maths, angel. How much longer till you can’t remember enough to repent properly, anyway? How much longer do you want to keep wandering off, forgetting where you ssset down every other godforsssaken thing?”

Aziraphale scowled at him. “It’s not like that,” he snapped.

“Yeah? Well, then, tell me how it isss.” Crowley stepped back and opened his arms wide, waiting rather rudely for an answer he was predisposed to hate with every fibre of his being.

“I don’t _want_ to die, you know,” Aziraphale said irritably. “And I certainly don’t need _you_ to remind me of everything wrong with me.”

“Well it sure seems like you have a death wish to me,” Crowley snarled, dropping his arms to his sides like stones. “And I don’t particularly care to watch the second act.”

Aziraphale stood abruptly. “Well, you’re free to go whenever you like,” he said coldly. “Don’t feel the need to wait around for me.” The angel started to turn away, looking like he intended to quit the row and the room, but Crowley grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back. He didn’t see the glimmer of tears in the angel’s eyes.

“I’m not through with you yet,” he hissed. “I am not bloody well leaving, but I’m not going to sssit around watching you die from ssstubbornnessss either.” 

Aziraphale scowled, sat back down on his chair, and folded his arms.

“You’re going to repent,” Crowley told him harshly, “and then you’re going to take me back.”

Aziraphale’s eyes snapped up to meet his. “What?”

“Repenting is for the murder,” Crowley said ungraciously, “but you need to lose the free will. Show them you’re playing by their rules. Take me back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale said crossly.

“I won’t put up a fight. It’ll be easssy,” Crowley urged, trying unsuccessfully to push down the fear rising inside him at the very thought of returning to Heaven as a captive. “We’ll just go outssside Adam’sss shield and make sssome noissse and you can sssay you were wrong and turn me over.”

_“No.”_ The angel’s tone was icy.

“Come on, Zira, it’ll sssave your life,” Crowley hissed, frustrated the angel wasn’t even considering it. “Before it’sss too late.”

“Stop it, Crowley, I said no!” Aziraphale snapped, distress colouring his voice as he pushed himself to his feet, trying to move past Crowley again.

The demon lurched forward, anger flaring in him as he grabbed Aziraphale’s arm. “You’ve done sssome ssstupid ssstuff before, angel,” he hissed, “but there isss no way in Hell or Heaven or anywhere elssse that I’m going to sssit around and watch you die for me when it’sss my own bloody fault in the firssst place.”

He watched Aziraphale’s face go from anger to hurt to surprise and finally to something like understanding. “Crowley,” he said, in a tone still far from calm but also further from anger, “it’s not your fault.”

“Don’t be ssstuipd,” Crowley hissed crossly. “Of courssse it isss.”

“No,” Aziraphale said, and now there was an edge in his voice. “No, it was _my_ choice to go after you, and _my_ choice to kill all those angels. It was _me_ , Crowley, not you.”

“But I put you in that posssition,” Crowley argued, irritated that the angel would even consider blaming himself for what had happened. “I got myssself captured, and couldn’t talk my way out. It was my own ssstupid fault. You shouldn’t have come after me.”

Aziraphale looked insulted at the very suggestion. “It wasn’t your fault they grabbed you,” he said shortly. “They were looking for me.”

“They would have come after me eventually,” Crowley dismissed, “once they figured out that that spell they thought you were under was probably preventing you from telling them anything about it.”

“That still doesn’t mean it was your fault,” Aziraphale said, now a tad cross himself. “They were looking for _me_ , and that makes it _my_ fault.”

“They didn’t—they didn’t _grab_ me,” Crowley hissed. “I gave myssself up.”

The demon waited for Aziraphale to freeze, for the angel to hit him maybe, or rant about how he’d made Aziraphale think it was his fault this whole time. The angel must be under the impression that Crowley had accidentally taken a bullet for him in the bookshop by being in the wrong place at the wrong time; it was the only reason he fathom why Aziraphale would refuse to let him accept the consequences of his actions.

But Aziraphale’s face only softened, and he said in a tone a little closer to normal, “Oh, Crowley, my dear, I already knew that.”

Crowley’s head snapped up. “What?”

Aziraphale gave him a bleak smile. “I knew that. Worked it out in a day or two when Above didn’t send any more angels after me. And then when I was figuring out how to spring you, it was all Heaven was talking about.” The angel smiled at him wanly. “Did you really go to Michael and ask him if Ludwig the Second was hanging around Upstairs?”

Crowley couldn’t suppress a huff of stressed laughter. “Yeah. Wouldn’t answer the question. He was really confused.”

“I imagine.”

“But really,” Crowley said, tone back to serious as he took another stab at convincing the angel, “Take me back. Please.”

Aziraphale’s expression hardened and he looked away. “That is never going to happen, Crowley.”

“Forget about me,” the demon urged, taking a step closer and lowering his voice slightly. “Think about yourself for once, angel. So maybe I get tortured in Heaven for a while; so what?”

Aziraphale’s head snapped around, eyes flashing with anger. _“So what?”_ he repeated.

“If you don’t do it,” Crowley stressed, switching tacks to logic, “you’re going to die. If you do, you won’t and there’s a fair chance that I might live too. It’s just better odds, angel.”

Aziraphale shook his head sharply. “After you got away once? They’d kill you for sure, and probably make a spectacle of it.” The angel noticeably shuddered. “Or do something worse.”

“Even if they do,” Crowley insisted, forcing down the part of him that was equally terrified at the very thought, “it’s better me than you.”

Aziraphale’s eyes jumped up to meet Crowley’s. “That’s not true.”

“Yes it is and you know it,” Crowley snapped. “I’m a _demon_ , Zira. I created _original sin_. I’m no good for anyone.” _I keep making people Fall_.

“I let you into the Garden in the first place,” Aziraphale snapped back. “That’s half on me too.”

Crowley opened his mouth to argue, but the angel ploughed right on over him.

“And it’s hardly like I was the best angel in the bunch anyway. And besides, they probably wouldn’t take me back even if I did unFall, after what I’ve done.”

Crowley shook his head, frustrated again. “Zira, just—stop arguing, please. There’s only one way out of this and we’re taking it, end of discussion.”

“No,” Aziraphale said crossly. “We are _not_ taking it; it was _my_ fault in the first place and it was the consequences of _my_ actions, and _I_ and _I alone_ am going to suffer the ramifications.”

Crowley felt like tearing out his hair. He took a step forward and grabbed the angel by the shoulders, as though physical contact would make his point clearer. _“Listen to me, Aziraphale,”_ he said, using the angel’s full name in the hopes that it would remove the sentimentality from the ice blue eyes in front of him, hearing his own voice become desperate as he played his last card. “You are going to _die_ because of me, and I am telling you right now, flat out, that _I am not worth it.”_

Aziraphale’s expression softened greatly, shoulders losing their tension under the demon’s hands. “Oh, _Crowley,”_ the angel said, unable to keep the fondness out of his voice, “of course you are.”

 

~~***~~

 

Aziraphale made it clear the next day that he had no intention of unFalling. Crowley almost got into another row with him then and there, but he hated being angry at the angel and still felt drained and somewhat ashamed from their spat the previous afternoon. 

During his whole day at the bank, Crowley couldn’t focus on anything, just thinking about what the angel’s resolution meant. It was apparently affecting his performance so much that Walter Jamieson, by nature an unpleasant sort of person, told him to take the rest of the week off and “pull himself together.”

As Crowley, sent home early, sat at the kitchen table and stared glumly down at some soup he’d microwaved for lunch, he came to the conclusion that he would never be able to persuade Aziraphale out of his decision.

That didn’t mean he had to accept it, though.

As the demon prodded moodily at a piece of chicken with his spoon, hungry but not particularly interested in eating, it occurred to him that if Aziraphale refused to take the steps necessary to unFall himself, maybe someone else could.

Crowley made a mental list of entities with that sort of influence, broth dripping off his spoon where it was suspended an inch above the soup’s surface. It was a very short list. He only knew two beings powerful enough to potentially unFall an angel. One hadn’t made a public appearance in several eons.

The other…

Crowley stood abruptly, dropping his spoon back into the bowl with a small splash and clatter. He walked to the window, glanced outside to make sure no one was about, and picked up his mobile.

The next day, Crowley saw Aziraphale off to work and then told the angel he would see him when he got back from the bank, and he might be stuck there going through expense reports a little later than usual. Aziraphale blinked at him and asked why he would be looking through expense reports at the bank, and the demon had to remind him that he worked there.

Once Aziraphale was well and truly gone, Crowley walked to Bert’s house, explained he needed to borrow his car for a couple of hours if he didn’t mind, paid him a little extra for petrol, and asked him not to mention it to Aziraphale. Bert looked uncertain about the last part, but accepted that Crowley knew best where the ailing angel was concerned.

Crowley drove out of Midfarthing and straight east for two and a half hours, hands tight on the wheel and eyes scanning the horizon, searching for anything out of the ordinary. 

The clouds remained steely and uninterested for most of his journey, and when he pulled off the A14 it started to drizzle. By the time Crowley found a place to park near his destination, it was coming down in earnest.

A quick look through Bert’s car revealed a slate grey umbrella in the glove compartment, which he pulled out gratefully. He clambered out of the vehicle, shook the umbrella out, and opened it above his head.

Locking the car behind him with a beep from the key fob, the demon walked calmly down a narrow winding road and under an arch, stepping between the tan stone buildings of Cambridge University.

Crowley checked his watch, doing a mental calculation based on the information Anathema had given him when he’d called. He flagged down a passing student and asked directions to a building whose name he only half-remembered. 

He got there without too much trouble and was soon standing beside a large Gothic building beside a well-kept green quad. Crowley ground to a halt a few feet from the door, adjusting his grip on the umbrella so he could pull his coat a little tighter around him. He checked his watch again.

Students bustled by him, many on bicycles or burdened with rucksacks and huddling under umbrellas.

Crowley watched them pass and shivered in the cold. He could feel a faint tingling in the air around him; he was in the right place.

Only a couple of minutes later, the doors to the building the demon was standing in front of swung open, and a flood of students made their way outside, many audibly complaining at the weather and pulling at their rucksacks for their umbrellas.

Crowley scanned them quickly as they walked past him, searching their faces.

A second burst of people followed the first, and finally a third stream trickled out, several of the students laughing loudly amongst themselves. And behind them, head inclined to the side, in deep discussion with a pretty brunette, was Adam. He was older, and taller, but that aura was unmistakable.

Crowley lurched into motion, hurrying forward before he could lose his nerve and tapping the Antichrist on the elbow. “Hi.”

Adam slowed to a halt and turned to see who had addressed him. He blinked, and then a smile broke over his face. “Crowley!” he said, greeting him like he would an old friend.

The brunette stopped as well, and gave the Antichrist a puzzled look. 

“Oh!” Adam said, suddenly seeming to realise the context in which the demon had appeared. “Ah. Beth, this is…er, Crowley. We go way back.”

The brunette—Beth—smiled politely at Crowley and gave him a little wave. 

Crowley forced a smile out in return. It felt more like a grimace.

“Er,” Adam said, and then turned to his companion. “Beth, honey, how about you head back and I’ll meet you up in a bit. Crowley and I should, er, catch up.” He glanced back at Crowley, as though confirming that this worked with him. The demon nodded and tried to look friendly. He wasn’t very successful.

“Okay,” Beth said, in a tone that said she wasn’t very okay with it but was resigning herself to the situation.

“It shouldn’t take long, right?” Adam asked, again glancing at Crowley. The demon shrugged. “Er, I’ll phone if it’s more than an hour, how about that?”

“Okay,” Beth said again. She leaned over to give Adam a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Bye,” Adam said, and watched her go. Then he turned back to Crowley. “Well.”

“Can we talk somewhere?” the demon asked, feeling rather chilled as the wind gusted a bout of rain under their umbrellas.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Adam said, and motioned the demon towards the building. “We can sit inside.”

Before long, they were seated at a small table set against the wall of a room that looked like a student study space. It was currently deserted, something Crowley was grateful for. The table was pushed up against a tall window, the leaded glass casting rain-streaked shadows over their faces.

In some ways, Adam had changed a lot in the intervening fourteen years. In other ways, he hadn’t changed at all. He had aged handsomely, into a sort of classical Greek masculine beauty that hadn’t been seen on Earth for over a millennium. He looked smarter now, and kinder, but his long, golden curls still hung too far over his eyes and he had the same sheepish, mischievous grin that had encouraged him to wander into Mr Richards’ orchard to steal apples.

He was looking over the table at Crowley now with a mix of nostalgia and curiosity, hands folded in front of him. “I’m guessing Anathema and Newt told you where to find me?” he asked. 

Crowley nodded. “Cambridge. Very nice.”

Adam shrugged modestly. “I’m finishing up my doctorate work. I’ll be a lecturer next year. Philosophy.”

Crowley nodded again; Anathema had mentioned that as well. It was difficult to escape the irony. “Why is it raining?” he asked, casting a glance out the window.

Adam looked surprised. “Sorry?”

Crowley cleared his throat awkwardly. “I thought you could control the weather. Lower Tadfield was always sunny, and all that. So why is it raining?”

Adam gave him a wan smile. “I try not to use my powers much anymore. Besides, I quite like the rain.” He looked out the window, the light streaming the shadows of raindrops down his face. He smiled sadly and turned back to Crowley. “But you didn’t come to ask about the weather.”

Crowley looked down at the table and then back at the Antichrist, still palpably glowing with the power of his birthright, with more ability than someone like Crowley could fathom resting at his fingertips. It could destroy him if he made a wrong move, but it could also save Aziraphale.

“I want you to unFall Aziraphale,” Crowley said without preamble. 

Adam sighed heavily and looked down at where his hands were folded on the tabletop. “Of course you do.”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with wanting that,” Crowley snapped, then adjusted his tone. “It seems very reasonable to me.”

“Crowley,” Adam said slowly, as though weighing the demon’s name. “Is that really why you came?”

“Yes,” Crowley said emphatically. “Zira—Aziraphale—he’s got this disease—it’s called Alzheimer’s, and it’s killing him.” He only barely kept his voice level. “If you said no before because you wanted him to experience life as a human or something, that’s happened. You got what you wanted. But it’s—it’s getting serious. Please.” 

Adam looked at Crowley long and hard, so long that the demon had to blink and look away. “Aziraphale knew what he was doing,” the Antichrist said at last. “He knew there would be risks associated with rescuing you, and he accepted them.”

“Not you, too,” Crowley said sourly, starting to stand up. This whole trip had been a colossal, unbelievable waste of time—

Adam raised a hand. “Hear me out.” Crowley scowled, hesitated, and sat back down. “Have you considered how Aziraphale feels about this?”

Crowley narrowed his eyes at Adam. “He wants to take all the bullets himself.”

“But how does he feel about…unFalling, as you put it?”

Crowley wasn’t sure what the Antichrist was getting at. “He doesn’t want to have to turn me back in to do it,” he admitted, rather grudgingly. “Don’t know why not.”

Adam gave him a look that was very kind. “I’m afraid you’ll have to figure that one out yourself. But have you considered how Aziraphale would feel about _being an angel again?”_

Crowley opened his mouth to respond and then reconsidered the question. “Well,” he began.

“I rather think he may not want to go back.”

Crowley scowled at him. “And how would you know?”

Adam gave him a small smile. “I seem to have picked up a touch of my grandfather’s omniscience,” he said, almost apologetically.

Crowley narrowed his eyes at him. “What, spying, are we?”

Adam gave him a look that was so honest and clear that Crowley felt rather ashamed for even thinking it. “I wouldn’t call it that,” he said mildly.

Crowley felt himself colour slightly and averted his eyes.

“And another thing,” Adam said, voice as calm as it had ever been. “Even if I did return Aziraphale to Heaven, how do you think he would be received?”

“They’d get used to it,” Crowley grumbled.

“I’m not so sure they would,” Adam said. “And if he knew what he was doing, and doesn’t want to go back, and wouldn’t be welcome even if he did, don’t you think we should respect his wishes?”

“He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Crowley mumbled. 

“Sorry?”

“He’s—he’s losing his memories, losing bits of himself. It’s what the disease does. He doesn’t mean what he’s saying.”

Adam tilted his head slightly. “Or does he, and you just don’t agree with it?”

Crowley shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Look,” the demon said after a painful moment, “I don’t care if he ever goes back to Heaven, if he doesn’t want to. Just—he’s dying. Please.” Crowley felt his eyes begin to burn, but swallowed and carried on. “Return him his immortality, or—or something. I—look at me.” Crowley gestured to himself hopelessly. “What am I—what am _I_ going to do when he’s gone? Isn’t there something— _anything—_ you can do?”

Adam looked at him sadly, the expression seeming to reach all the way to his core. 

“Or if there’s something _I_ can do,” the demon continued desperately, “anything at all—if it’s a fair swap you want, I’ll do it.” Crowley took a deep breath and plunged on, knowing that his words could seal his fate. “If you need to make me mortal to make him immortal again, do it. I’ll take his place, if that’s what it takes. Or if—if—” The demon’s voice cracked. “If I need to go back to Heaven, or if it’sss my life you want—you can have it, I ssswear—” Crowley broke off with a slight hitch as Adam reached across the table and laid a hand on Crowley’s. 

“Even if all you can do is heal the disease,” Crowley said wretchedly, voice dropping to a softer register. “I can’t do it. He’s falling apart, he’s losing who he is, and I can’t—I just—if there’s _anything_ —”

“Crowley,” Adam said, voice calm. 

Crowley broke off with a miserable stammer.

“I am truly sorry,” Adam said, and his tone was sympathetic, eyes wise and sad and older than they had any right to be, “but there is an order to these things.”

Crowley blinked and looked away.

“Everyone dies eventually,” Adam continued, “and not every story has a happy ending.”

Crowley scowled and stared out the window, where the rain was still tapping quietly against the glass. “Why can’t this one?” he asked bitterly.

Adam didn’t reply for a long while.

“Sunlight,” Adam said, following the demon’s gaze, “is so much better when compared to the rain, don’t you agree?”

Crowley, seeing where this was going, refused to answer.

“What is life without death; what is happiness without sadness?”

“A good time,” Crowley grumbled.

The corner of Adam’s mouth twisted up in a smile. “You and Aziraphale had six millennia to yourselves,” he pointed out. “Yet have these past years not been happier than many of those?”

Crowley blinked and looked over at Adam.

“Did mortality not grant Aziraphale a new life, a new…type of life?” Adam asked, sounding genuinely curious. “You keep saying that he Fell, like that was a demotion. But you Fell as well, and did you consider yourself less than Aziraphale, an angel, because of it?”

Crowley frowned at the Antichrist, assuming it was a rhetorical question. But Adam waited patiently and the demon ground out a reluctant “No,” adding after a moment, “but I never much liked Heaven anyway.”

“And do you think Aziraphale feels any different, now that he has Fallen?” Adam asked. “He may have lost his wings, his immortality, and his powers, but he still stands by his decision. Did you never wonder at that?”

Crowley, feeling increasingly poorly about himself, returned to looking through the window, attempting to escape the unpleasant truths Adam was laying calmly at his feet.

“When the world was ending,” Adam said after a long moment, “why do you think it was you and Aziraphale there, among the Horsemen and a handful of humans?”

Crowley glanced reluctantly back at Adam, unsure what he was getting at. He’d never really thought about it.

He considered for a moment. “Because we were opposites,” he said at last. “An angel and a demon. Antitheses.”

Adam shook his head. “Not because you were opposites,” he corrected, “but because you were more similar than either of you wanted to admit. You weren’t there as Adversaries; you were there as friends.”

Crowley blinked and looked away.

“Maybe being an angel, or a demon, or a human—maybe they’re not rungs on a ladder,” Adam suggested. “Maybe none of them is greater than the others; maybe they are all merely different states of being.”

Crowley scowled out the window, where a huddle of students was passing by outside, cowering under umbrellas. “But Zira—he’s _meant_ to be an angel,” Crowley insisted, turning his gaze back to Adam. “It’s in his soul, it’s—it’s written all over his stupid face, it’s just _who he is.”_ The demon’s conviction rang in his voice, begging the Antichrist to understand.

“You started out as an angel,” Adam said evenly. “Yet you still Fell.”

“That’s different,” Crowley dismissed. “It was part of the ineffable plan, that Lucifer and the demons had to start as angels. But we all Fell together, right at the beginning—Aziraphale didn’t. It wasn’t part of the plan.”

Adam studied him.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Crowley continued, unable to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Why did he stay an angel for _six thousand years_ if that wasn’t what he was meant to be?”

Adam sighed, not unkindly. “Oh, Crowley.”

The demon gave Adam an irritated, hopeless look. People seemed to be saying that to him a lot these days.

“I thought you of all people would realise that no one is _meant_ to be anything,” Adam said. “You didn’t Fall because it was ineffable; you Fell because you made decisions that led you to Fall. Free will, Crowley. Aziraphale didn’t Fall because he was forced to, or because it was ineffable; he Fell because he _wanted_ to.”

Crowley felt an irrational flare of anger at Adam’s characterisation of the angel, and something must have shown on his face, because the Antichrist amended, “Sure, maybe he didn’t want to do the actual _Falling_ bit, per se, but he certainly didn’t want to be an angel anymore. After what they’d done to you—it’s hardly surprising he doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. Even if it had cost Aziraphale his life, do you really think he would have left you there?”

Crowley swallowed, keeping his eyes on Adam’s neatly folded hands. He didn't trust himself to look up. “He should have,” he said, a little hoarsely.

Adam was quiet for a long while, and the demon was aware that he was being studied. He kept his eyes downcast.

“I think you forget sometimes that Aziraphale also has free will,” the Antichrist said after a moment, voice kind. “And I think we need to respect that.”

Crowley’s mouth twisted in a bitter mimicry of a smile. “I thought you’d say something like that.” He started to rise, still keeping his eyes averted.

“Crowley,” Adam said, rising as well. The demon, itching to leave, forced himself to wait.

“What?” he snapped.

“It is not your responsibility to fix everything,” the Antichrist said. “And no one is expecting you to except yourself.”

“Gee, thanks,” Crowley said, not particularly interested in Adam’s cold comfort. He wanted miracles, not words. He wanted Aziraphale, not consolation for his passing.

“I _am_ sorry about what’s happened,” Adam said, “but I hope you will think about what I’ve said.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Crowley grumbled. 

Adam looked like he wanted to give the demon a parting hug, or at least shake his hand, but Crowley just turned and stalked away. He shook his umbrella open before he left the room, leaving a trail of water gleaming on the floor behind him.

“Goodbye, Crowley.”

The demon didn’t respond, instead taking care to knock his umbrella against the doorframe so it tipped and dripped more water onto the floor.

The rain was letting up slightly as Crowley strode outside, bumping into a couple of students on his way. They apologised; Crowley didn’t. 

His shoes splashed through the puddles as he made his way back to Bert’s car, taking care to shake out the barman's umbrella before sliding into the driver’s seat.

For a long moment he just stared out the rain-smeared windscreen, hands resting on the steering wheel. The rain pattered quietly on the roof, giving the illusion of safety.

Crowley took several long, slow breaths and closed his eyes, just feeling himself breathe. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel and then slowly loosened. 

The demon opened his eyes, put the key in the ignition, turned it, and pulled out of the car park.

He turned the radio off and spent the entire ride in silence, just listening to the drumming of the rain and dull roar of the road.

He missed his Bentley.

Though he wanted to ignore everything Adam had said on principle, he couldn’t stop himself from turning the Antichrist’s words over in his head, feeling them out for flaws. Many of them rang true. 

Crowley wanted to be upset about it, wanted to tell himself that he knew better, but he also knew that wasn’t true. He didn’t want to let Aziraphale die, he reflected miserably, but he didn’t want to force him to live either. 

He just wanted everything back to the way it had been before those two grey-suited angels entered Aziraphale’s bookshop, back when they were just laughing and sitting together in the upper room, arguing good-naturedly over who went to Heaven and who to Hell. He wanted those days back, but he knew they were beyond his reach now.

And Adam had been right about another thing: he _was_ happier here, making the angel toast every morning and discussing the little unimportant things with Bert, than he ever had been sitting in his flat all alone, terrorising his plants. It was a different sort of life, but to Crowley it seemed a better one.

The drive back seemed to go faster than the one there, and Crowley was relieved to see the first line of houses in Midfarthing come into view for more than just the supernatural protection they afforded.

He returned Bert’s car with his thanks and walked back to the cottage in the rain, having returned the barman's umbrella.

He was quite wet by the time he finally made it back to Somerset Lane. There was a dark patch of unoccupied earth in the flowerbeds where Aziraphale had planted the lilies.

Crowley let himself in and started making dinner, preoccupied with his own thoughts. Aziraphale arrived not long after, shaking out his own, colourfully polka-dotted umbrella as he crossed the threshold.

“I’m back,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. He walked into the kitchen a moment later, a smile of greeting crossing his face as he successfully located the demon. “How was work, my dear?”

Crowley couldn’t respond at first, just taking Aziraphale in and attempting to memorise every line of the angel, from the dimples in his cheeks to the hints of raindrops caught in his loose, golden curls. This was the Aziraphale he wanted to remember forever, Crowley realised suddenly: slightly rumpled in his tartan jumper but smiling, and looking like there was no place in the whole world he’d rather be.

Crowley felt a sudden rawness come over his eyes, blinked, and hastily looked away. “Er, they—I’ve got the rest of the week off,” he managed.

Aziraphale’s expression switched to sympathetic horror in an instant, misinterpreting the demon’s sudden evasiveness. “Oh, I’m sorry! What happened?”

Crowley shrugged. “It’s not important,” he said. “It was just—not a good day.” That much was true, at least.

Aziraphale seemed to get the hint, and didn’t say anything else, though he did walk over and pat the demon comfortingly on the shoulder. Crowley felt the gesture was entirely undeserved.

Aziraphale started to walk back into the living room. “Wait,” Crowley said, biting his lip. The angel paused in the doorway and turned.

“Yes?”

Crowley took a steadying breath and reached out towards the counter for additional support. “Do you really, honestly, not want to unFall?” 

Aziraphale was quiet for a moment. Then: “Yes.”

Crowley closed his eyes and nodded, forcing himself to accept Aziraphale’s words as though they were a necessary poison. 

“Okay.”

Crowley took another breath and forced his eyes open. He was a little surprised to see Aziraphale still standing in the doorway, looking very solemn but also very certain.

Crowley twitched the corner of his mouth up in a gesture that was part humour, part apology, and part sorrow.

Aziraphale was looking at him with a gaze not so different.

“Dinner will be ready in a couple of minutes,” Crowley said at last, breaking the spell and turning back to the cooker. “If you want to set the table, that would be great.”

Aziraphale nodded and walked past Crowley, angling towards where they kept the plates and cutlery. When he walked past the demon a moment later, burdened down with his load, he paused for a moment. “Thank you,” he said.

Crowley made a sound of agreement and didn’t look over, keeping his face turned away from the angel.

“I appreciate it,” Aziraphale added, hovering uncertainly at the demon’s shoulder. Then he put his head down and walked out of the kitchen in the direction of the table. 

Crowley stared at the cooker and felt his lagging spirits lift a little. No matter what the future held, he decided, he would take it when it came, like anyone else. And right now Aziraphale was in the next room, very real and alive and probably rather hungry, and it seemed to him that he should be focussing on that while he still could.


	19. Promises

With his acceptance of Aziraphale’s chosen fate, Crowley felt a great deal of his stress begin to lift. Aziraphale continued to deteriorate, falling further and further into the grips of Alzheimer’s, but Crowley focussed on trying to see the bright side of things and not making a big deal out of things the angel forgot or misplaced. 

He could tell this was having a positive impact on Aziraphale as well, because the angel was markedly more cheerful. He also seemed more willing to go to Crowley for help when he misplaced something, and was less likely to waste time trying to figure it out himself, only to forget halfway through whatever it was he had been trying to remember. And he _was_ forgetting more and more. It wasn’t so much forgetfulness now as absentmindedness. Crowley might come across the angel attempting to tie his shoe but he was only holding one lace, or trying to put a button-up on _over_ his jumper. Once he was pretty sure the angel emerged from the shower with shampoo still in his hair in frothy white swirls.

The disease had now gone beyond wiping Aziraphale’s memory and playing tricks with his mind. Crowley was beginning to see some of the other symptoms Dr Griffiths had named, the ones that appeared as the disease progressed.

Aziraphale’s interest in his job at the corner shop had, for the first time since he had announced to Crowley that was going to get a job, waned. He routinely forgot what dates and times he was supposed to work, to the extent that Crowley had to fully keep the angel’s schedule of work and tea visits himself, and remind the angel whenever he had an appointment, sometimes repeatedly. Things culminated when old Jack Livingstone himself, proprietor of the corner shop, came by one afternoon and explained to Crowley in terms that were, in Crowley’s opinion, far too calm and reasonable, that he had to let the angel go.

“What do you mean?” Crowley hissed, feeling as though he had been personally insulted.

Jack sighed patiently. He was no spring chicken himself, Crowley noted, but he seemed to have kept both his wits and keen business sense about him. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just that—he moves things around in the shop. Rearranges them and then stops halfway through. He can’t show customers where anything is anymore, when they ask. And I don’t think he's counting the items properly for inventory. He loses track halfway through and picks up in the wrong spot. It’s wreaking havoc with my records.”

Crowley scowled at the man, wondering how he had ever liked him. “Surely there’s _something_ he can do. He loves that job.”

Jack gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry, but he’s doing more harm than good. And I’m afraid to let him carry some of the boxes. He’s getting on in years—don’t look at me like that, I know I am too, and there’s a reason I usually hire the local teens.”

At Crowley’s scowl, Jack continued, “He’s a fine chap, and I like him, but good business sense says he has to go. Let him retire.”

Crowley continued scowling, rather resenting being treated like he was young and therefore ignorant, but Jack wouldn’t be swayed. Crowley broke the news to Aziraphale that evening, but the angel was unnervingly calm and took it without a fuss. 

After that, Aziraphale spent most of his time reading or writing.

About five years after Dr Griffiths diagnosed Aziraphale, the angel started to lose interest in his flower garden as well. Weeds sprang up and started growing up over the dahlias the angel had so carefully planted the previous autumn. Crowley tried to encourage him to continue upkeep on the garden, but he seemed increasingly less interested. When Crowley took it upon himself to weed the flowers, because the sight of it as anything less than spotless filled him with a sort of clinging dread, Aziraphale would sometimes watch him through the window, as though curious as to what he was doing.

The angel lost his interest in cooking shortly after that, and even going over to the villagers’ houses for tea seemed to wear him out. Crowley often had to drag him out of the cottage, even to go to the pub or Mendellson’s cafe. In some ways this was a blessing; Aziraphale had lost most interest in personal grooming, and Crowley had stopped pressing the issue if he wasn’t going out in public. Aziraphale would often arrive at breakfast in the same clothes he had worn the day before, or with articles on inside out or backwards. 

But the one thing Aziraphale never lost his interest in was writing the journals. On the contrary, he threw himself into them with renewed fervour. Two dozen slim, black leather volumes sat on the shelf by the angel’s older volumes, each carefully numbered in the upper right-hand corner in gold pen. The angel had passed the turn of the last millennium, skimming through the dark ages and working his way back through Greek and Roman history. Things started to get increasingly hazy for Crowley around this point, because it was awfully difficult to remember something that happened two millennia ago, even if you were immortal. Aziraphale had also ventured into pre-Arrangement territory, meaning that the few interactions he had with Crowley involved them trying to kill each other, something Crowley neither remembered very well nor particularly wanted to.

Sometimes Aziraphale seemed to recognise that he was losing bits of himself, and those days were the worst. He would easily get frustrated trying to remember something, and would become angry with himself when he kept trying to put his coat on upside down. Crowley was always quick to help, but it was clear that the angel didn’t like losing his independence, and he would often shake off Crowley’s offers of assistance. These were the days that Aziraphale would look at Crowley like he was terrified of what was happening but also hated himself for feeling that way; the mixture of emotions always stabbed at the demon’s chest. These were the days Aziraphale was his old self—his _first_ self, warrior of the Lord, six thousand years old and as proud as stone. This was the Aziraphale who had brandished a flaming sword and gone with Crowley to face Lucifer at the end of the world.

Other days, the angel would hum along pleasantly, seemingly unaware of all he had lost. He would look mildly baffled when Crowley swapped out his spoon for a fork, but then continue on in good cheer. Aziraphale usually wouldn’t write in the journals on these days; he would just sit and read, or sometimes sit with a book on his lap but stare through the window, or at Crowley, as though he were the most fascinating thing in the world. Sometimes Crowley wondered if he was trying to remember who he was. These were the days that Aziraphale was like his _second_ self, the one that Crowley had got to know after the Arrangement. This was the Aziraphale that loved books and thought the Earth was a wonderful place and tried overdosing on tea on a regular basis. This was the Aziraphale sitting in his bookshop, geeking out over  _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies_ and collecting misprinted Bibles.

It was on one of those first sort of days when Aziraphale told Crowley he’d like to speak to him. Crowley readily agreed, a little wary of the angel’s serious, crystal-clear tone as he took a seat at the kitchen table. 

He expected Aziraphale to sit down as well, but the angel hovered uncertainly by the edge of the table instead. After a long moment of deliberation, Aziraphale sat down gingerly on the edge of his chair, opposite the demon.

“What’s the matter?” Crowley asked, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.

Aziraphale looked down at his hands, where his fingers tapped nervously against each other and the surface of the table. After a long moment, he said, “I—I want you to promise me something.”

Crowley felt a familiar dread creep over him, the same feeling that always came and chilled him right to the bone whenever he thought about what would happen… _after_.

“Anything,” the demon said, and meant it.

Aziraphale looked up at him, expression nervous but determined. “Don’t try to save me.”

Crowley took a deep breath and sat back, processing the request.

“You’ve tried your best,” Aziraphale said quickly, taking the demon’s silence as an opportunity to rationalise his decision. “And it didn’t work. And if it means ‘true remorse’ or whatever, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want that.”

Crowley sat forward again, propping his elbows up on the table and carefully looking Aziraphale over. His eyes were clear and he was present in the moment—this request was from the Aziraphale he’d spent the last six millennia with. “Why?” he asked at last—it was the only thing he could think to ask, the only word he trusted his voice with.

Aziraphale took a long, shuddering breath and looked over at Crowley, meeting the demon’s yellow eyes with his own, icy blue. His voice softened. “Because it’s going to get worse, and you’ll want to save me. I know you’ve respected what I want so far, and I thank you for that—but that might not seem so important…later.”

Crowley frowned worriedly at the angel, knowing he was probably right but still feeling mildly offended that Aziraphale would think he wasn’t as good as his word. “Are you doubting my resolve?”

Aziraphale shook his head quickly, earnestly. “No—I—I’m doubting my own.”

Crowley’s eyes snapped up, but Aziraphale was back to looking at the table, where his hands were now painfully still. “When it gets bad— _really_ bad, I mean—I don’t think I’ll be myself. Not the self I am now. Death—I think I’ll feel it coming.” The angel swallowed, and Crowley didn’t think he could tear his eyes away if he tried. “And if you asked me—I don’t know if I’d be able to—you know. Go through with it.” The angel’s voice trailed off nervously. Then he looked back up at Crowley, and his voice gained strength again. “But I’m telling you now—right now, Crowley, from me—don’t try to unFall me, and don’t let me convince you otherwise.”

Crowley was finding breathing a bit difficult. A scene was playing through his head, one in which Aziraphale, dying and lost and terrified, begged Crowley to save him. And Crowley, with the knowledge of how to do so, caught between the promise he had made in the past and what was being asked of him in the present.

It wasn’t a promise he thought he could keep.

“Aziraphale—” he began uncertainly.

“Please,” the angel spoke over him, eyes boring into his own, not quite desperate but very insistent. “I know—I know this isn’t an easy request, but I don’t trust myself anymore.” The unspoken corollary hung between them in the air: _but I trust you_.

Crowley bit his lip and looked down at the table.

Aziraphale sat in silence, evidently having said his piece and waiting for Crowley’s response.

Crowley continued staring at the table, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He wanted Aziraphale to say it was okay if he didn’t want to promise, or offer him an easy out, but the angel was silent. 

And Crowley _had_ said he’d promise anything.

Crowley let out a long breath. Maybe the situation would never arise, he thought hopefully to himself. Maybe this part of Aziraphale would remain sharp until the end.

It was a lot to hope for.

“Okay,” Crowley said at last, dragging the word out of himself after what he was aware was an uncomfortably long period of time. “Fine. I promise.”

The demon stood up and walked quickly away from the table without looking at Aziraphale, afraid of the angel’s expression and anything else that might be asked of him.

It was one of the last days Aziraphale would be what Crowley considered ‘all there.’

 

~~***~~

 

Things took a turn for the worse that winter. During the latest round of memory testing by Dr Griffiths, Aziraphale became upset and refused to finish. Crowley hastily assured him that he didn’t have to, and after escorting the distraught angel away, returned to talk to the doctor, who explained that this reaction was not uncommon.

“It might be best that we stop conducting the tests,” she said. “We have enough data to chart his progress, and we can project the final stages.” Her voice was kind. “If he doesn’t want to do them anymore, there’s no substantial medical reason for him to continue.”

She gave him an estimate of two years, maybe two and a half. That was if another disease brought on by the Alzheimer’s didn’t get to him first.

Crowley felt numb as he saw her out and thanked her hollowly for her time.

He didn’t tell Aziraphale.

About a month later, Crowley was getting the tea ready when he walked back into the living room to find Aziraphale sitting in his chair and looking down at the book in his lap with a puzzled expression.

“What is it?” Crowley asked, walking over.

Aziraphale looked up at him, expression slightly vacant. Then he reached down and pulled from between the open pages a single long, silky, jet black feather.

Crowley froze. 

“I wonder what this was doing in there,” Aziraphale said, confusion evident in his voice as he looked between the feather he held carefully between two fingers and the book.

Crowley forced himself into motion, stepping forward and reaching out for the feather. It was one of the shorter secondaries, only about as long as his forearm, and the vanes had been carefully smoothed out, though it was clear it had been touched—stroked, maybe—often. His mouth went dry.

“Just tucked in this Bible here, in Genesis,” Aziraphale continued, sounding quite puzzled. He looked up at the feather in Crowley’s hand. “It doesn’t…” the angel trailed off. “Is it yours?” he asked at last.

Crowley felt himself nod, turning the feather over in his hands. His mind was years in the past, watching as Aziraphale collected feathers from the back garden of the cottage, after the demon had healed his wings. Aziraphale had gone inside, told him to take his time, and said he was going to burn them.

“Do you…collect feathers?” Aziraphale asked, sounding a little bemused. “I feel—it’s yours, somehow—”

Crowley stared at him. “Aziraphale, I have wings,” he said bluntly. “I’m a demon, remember?”

The angel blinked at him blankly for a few moments and then something seemed to shift behind his eyes. “Oh, yes, of course,” he said. “Sorry, my dear.” He didn’t particularly sound like he remembered, only that he was trying to agree with whatever Crowley said.

He reached back out for the feather, but Crowley felt himself pulling it away, still staring at the angel.

Aziraphale frowned at him. “I suppose it’s yours,” the angel said after a moment, “but if you don’t mind, I’d quite like to keep it.”

Crowley looked down at the long, ebony secondary. It wasn’t like he didn’t have more where it came from, he thought to himself, and forced himself to hand the feather back.

Aziraphale took the secondary with such care and delicacy as Crowley had never shown even his own leading primaries. The angel turned it over in his hands and absently ran a finger down one side. It seemed to transport Aziraphale to another place, and he was soon staring off into the middle distance, a slight smile dancing on his face. 

Crowley’s mind jumped back to Aziraphale’s birdwatching habit, and it occurred to him quite suddenly that the angel must be thinking about when he’d had his own wings, and could fly anywhere he wanted. All of Aziraphale’s gorgeous white feathers had burned to iridescent ash when he Fell, Crowley remembered, and he realised abruptly that even that loss must have had a sizable impact on the newly-human Aziraphale.

It was just another way he hadn’t been there for the angel.

Crowley felt something in his throat, coughed, and excused himself.

After that, he saw Aziraphale with the feather more and more, often gently stroking its soft edges or turning it over slowly in his hands. Crowley tried to lift the feather off the angel twice more, aiming to get rid of it so it couldn’t continue to haunt Aziraphale with half-recalled memories beyond his reach, but each time the angel rebuffed his attempts, hands tightening around the quill of the secondary and refusing to be parted with it. Crowley considered stealing it from where Aziraphale had evidently hidden it in Genesis chapter 3, but that seemed a little underhanded, even for him.

As the spring came to thaw the ground, Crowley was delighted to find that some of Aziraphale’s interest in gardening had rekindled, and the angel set about planting poppies with some of his previous fervour. It was good for him to at least get outside sometimes, Crowley thought; good to get some time away from his books and the line of slim black journals and that damned feather.

When Crowley got off of work one sunny afternoon, he came back and collected Aziraphale for dinner at the pub. The angel agreed readily enough and, after Crowley had helped him into more presentable clothes and helped him with his coat, walked with him over to the pub.

“How are you two gents doing this afternoon?” Bert asked amiably as Crowley and Aziraphale wove their way between the half-filled tables to their customary place at the bar. 

“Grand,” Crowley said, the barman's cheerfulness brightening his own mood. Aziraphale nodded assent.

“Wait, I have it,” Bert said, stopping in front of the angel and holding up a finger as he closed his eyes, clearly trying to remember something. Aziraphale smiled politely, looking a little puzzled, but Crowley was just as bemused.

Bert opened his eyes and lowered his finger to level it at Aziraphale. “Last guess: is it _Aeneas?”_

Aziraphale blinked at him once and then laughed. Crowley joined in as well, feeling remarkably cheered. 

“No, Bert, I’m afraid it’s not Ae—Ay—what was it?” the angel asked.

“Aeneas,” Bert repeated pleasantly. “Someone from—what was it?—Roman mythology. Son of someone or another. Heard about it the other day from my mate’s kid, he’s reading one of those old classics for Uni.”

Crowley chuckled to himself, trying to imagine Aziraphale in Roman mythology. Given that it wasn’t vastly different from Christian mythology, it wasn’t very hard, but the demon doubted there were very many ways to sneak around reading books and avoiding one’s duties with that many gods keeping on eye on everything. He wondered absently where he would fit in in this series of events.

“All right, I give up,” Bert was saying to Aziraphale. “It’s been—what—seventeen years? I’ve gone through every name starting with ‘A’ that I can pull out of my old brain, and I think I’m finally about out. So, Mr A. Ziraphale, what _does_ the A. stand for?”

Aziraphale laughed and held up a hand in defeat. He licked his lips, started to lean forward, and froze. His smile faltered. “Er,” Aziraphale began uncertainly.

Bert backed off immediately. “I didn’t mean—” he began.

“No, it’s fine,” Crowley said hastily, jumping to the rescue. He leaned over to rub Aziraphale’s shoulder in a reassuring manner, racking his own brains for whatever name the angel had finally settled on, knowing that if he incorrectly chose something Bert had mentioned over the intervening seventeen years, the barman would call foul play. “It’s…” Crowley was blanking as well. 

Aziraphale was looking at him with a mix of horror and confusion, and finally something clicked in Crowley’s mind.

“Ambrose!” he said triumphantly, turning back to Bert and gesturing at Aziraphale. “It’s Ambrose Ziraphale. No one really calls him that, though; I’d almost forgotten it myself!” Crowley laughed nervously.

Bert was looking like he’d just had his eyes opened. _“Ambrose,”_ he said, turning over the syllables as he spoke. _“Ambrose._ How did I not get that one?”

Aziraphale had the good grace to shrug modestly, looking relieved that the situation had been salvaged. “You put in a good effort,” he said consolingly.

“Ah, well, there goes seventeen years of hard work,” Bert said, chuckling to himself. “Well, _Ambrose_ , pleasure meeting you all proper-like, and your dinner’s on the house tonight.” Bert chuckled to himself again and moved down the bar to collect some glasses sitting nearby. _“Ambrose.”_

An hour later, they were finishing up their respective dinners and the pub was pretty well filled with villagers, many of whom were cheering at where the telly was broadcasting a football match.

Crowley, who was still feeling rather peckish, was busy plucking chips from Aziraphale’s half-eaten plate when Bert made his way back over to them.

“I was reading an article the other day,” the barman said conversationally as he refilled Crowley’s drink, “saying that a person should really have a will written by the time they’re thirty. _Thirty_. Imagine that. It’s like they think we’re going to keel over by the time we’re forty, right?”

“Right,” Crowley said with a polite laugh, thinking how he’d never bothered with the things in six millennia. Whenever he could wrangle a new corporation out of Hell, he’d always gone back for anything he really wanted and convinced the new owners to part with it. A bit of fire and brimstone usually did the trick, maybe with a flash of the old serpentine eyes for effect.

At the same time, Aziraphale said, “Oh dear.”

Bert gave him a sidelong look. “What, you mean you don’t have one yet?” A concerned look crossed the barman's face. “You should look into that.”

“Wills…” Aziraphale said slowly. “They say who gets all your things, right?”

“Yep,” Bert said. “Bunch of excuses to give more money to lawyers, I say, but they’re bloody important nowadays.”

“I see,” Aziraphale said, looking worried.

“They’re sort of fun,” Bert said, clearly noticing he’d said the wrong thing and trying to cheer Aziraphale up again. “You get to decide who you like the best, and who gets the coolest stuff. Don’t like that aunt? Brrrrpt—you get nothing. Weird sister? Nothing for you, either!”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, brightening considerably. “I see. Well, I shan’t be needing one of those, then.” The angel looked over at Crowley, who had been watching the exchange and getting increasingly more worried as Aziraphale’s mood floundered. But now that the angel was smiling at him, Crowley felt his own flagging spirits lift in response. “Crowley can have everything, of course.”

The demon felt himself inexplicably colour and covered it by sneaking another chip from Aziraphale, as though to prove his lack of trustworthiness.

“Well, there you go,” said Bert, looking like he regretted starting the conversation but glad it had ended reasonably well. “I’d write that down somewhere, and you should be set.”

Aziraphale nodded and turned back to the barman. “Thanks, Bert.”

Bert nodded uncomfortably and hurriedly found something that needed his attention further down the bar.

The angel and demon sat in an awkward silence for a long time. Or, at least, Crowley thought it was awkward; Aziraphale, on the other hand, seemed to think nothing was amiss as he continued nibbling absently on his chips. Noticing that Crowley had stopped stealing them, he shifted his plate closer to the demon in encouragement. Crowley shook his head.

Nothing had _really_ changed, Crowley reasoned to himself; it wasn’t like there was any other logical choice for the angel to bequeath his earthly possessions to. It was just—the way Aziraphale had said it, and the fact that he _had_ said it—it felt like something was being entrusted to him, something he didn’t know if he ought to be trusted with.

It was still bothering him when they returned to their little cottage, but Aziraphale only patted his elbow and wished him a good night before turning in. 

Crowley sat outside for a long while, watching the clouds scuttle past as the first stars came out. He didn’t _feel_ trustworthy. He was a demon, and rather a screw-up of one at that. Aziraphale’s trust in him was as baffling as it was omnipresent. First the angel had trusted him with his life as a human, and then with his death, and now he was entrusting him with whatever came after. He wasn’t sure what the angel saw in him; he certainly didn’t see it in himself.


	20. A Memory of Eden

The summer waned long and hot, and the things Crowley considered to be the “important” aspects of Aziraphale’s mind started to fade away. He forgot several times that he was—or at least had been—an angel, and seemed to forget that Crowley was a demon several times a month. Sometimes he even thought Crowley was an angel, which was a little complicated to explain, though Aziraphale usually didn’t make such statements in public, which was a relief. 

Crowley was terrified the angel would lose even more, to the point where he would wake up one day and Aziraphale would just blink blankly at him and ask who he was and what he was doing in the cottage. After everything that had happened, Crowley wasn’t sure if he could handle looking into those crystal blue eyes and seeing not a spark of recognition, not a fragment of their six millennia of shared history looking back at him. Luckily, though the angel managed to completely forget Bert for a whole week, Crowley remained planted firmly in Aziraphale’s memory, for which the demon was unspeakably grateful.

On a hot, drizzly day in mid-June, Aziraphale wrote the journal on Eden. Crowley guessed that the angel had summarised large swaths of the first four millennia of their shared existence, since he had managed to condense thousands of years of history into about a hundred clean, white pages. 

Aziraphale found Crowley where he was hunting through the refrigerator, compiling a list of things to pick up at the grocer's, and asked the demon to come help, if he didn’t mind.

Crowley joined the angel in the living room a moment later and leaned back on the sofa. “Eden,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “Right back where it all started, eh?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, gazing down at the black-bound journal in his lap. The tip of his pen hovered above the surface, hand shaking slightly. Crowley had long since offered to transcribe the angel's words, since his handwriting was getting increasingly illegible, but Aziraphale had insisted on finishing the project himself. “The beginning.”

Crowley waited for a moment, but the angel was not forthcoming. “Well, what’ve you got so far?” he asked, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. 

Aziraphale looked down at the book and then up at Crowley. “Nothing,” he said, the honestly bare in his voice. “I don’t remember it.”

Crowley looked at him sharply, but there was no deception in the angel’s face either.

“I left myself a note—I think that’s what that meant—but I don’t—I don’t remember anything. Do you know what I meant? About Eden?”

Crowley shook himself out of his haze. “Yes. Of course.” He looked down at his hands and back at the angel. “I’ll tell you about it, okay? What I remember, at least.”

Aziraphale nodded gratefully and rested the tip of his pen against the page.

Crowley thought back. “Eden. All right. So Dad had finished up creating the world and all the angels and the animals. But then He decided He wanted a little something else, and made the humans.” In his chair, Aziraphale started writing, pen scrawling over the paper. 

“Adam, first off,” Crowley added. “And then Eve. Everything was grand for a while, but then Lucifer caused trouble, and there was the Fall—do you remember that?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “A little. Remind me.”

Crowley swallowed and recounted again the story of Lucifer rebelling against Heaven, and his subsequent Fall. He told Aziraphale again how he had sauntered vaguely downwards after getting wind of what was happening to everyone with black feathers. He swallowed the truth and told Aziraphale that it hadn’t been so bad, and underlined how clever he’d been to not get cast down against his will, and how Falling was no big deal. He didn’t tell him what actually happened. 

He didn’t mention how the angels and soon-to-be demons fought, in hand-to-hand combat, until it was just Michael and Lucifer battling it out. Crowley, of course, had fled at the first sign of actual violence, shifting into his snake form and hiding among that perfect, emerald-green grass of Heaven. For a long time, that had been the only thing he remembered of Heaven—light, warmth, that lovely green grass, and the sound of angels dying around him. He didn’t mention how much he’d been reminded of that horrible day when Aziraphale had rescued him, half-conscious, from Heaven, right before the angel’s own Fall.

Crowley had hidden for days as the battle raged on. And when it began to decisively sway in favour of the angels, Crowley slithered even further away, huddling under a rock and praying it would all just end. Black-winged angels were being cast out of Heaven all around him, and they were screaming as they Fell, not from flaming wings but from wounds inflicted by their white-winged brethren. There were angels Crowley had been friendly with before the Fall, back when everything was new and shining and sin was not yet a glimmer in God’s eye. That day, Crowley saw those he had called friend murder some of his other friends, these the ones he had joined to prove a point. It would take three millennia before he trusted an angel again, and he had never called anyone friend since.

When it was clear that if he didn’t jump he would be pushed, Crowley slithered as far away from the fighting as he could get, shifted back into his humanoid form, great black wings stretched behind him, as damning as a bullseye on his back, pulled all the scraps of his terrified courage together, and jumped. He glided most of the way down, but it was more than just altitude he was losing. His divinity was stripped from him that day, and it felt like someone was tearing bits of his soul away. He remained immortal, retained his wings and powers and true form, but every part that said _Made by God_ and _Loved by God_ was ruthlessly torn away. He had rebelled, and he had been duly disowned. Crowley was crying when he jumped from the edge—he lost that ability halfway down. 

At about the same time, the forces of Heaven streamed over the edge, casting down all the rest of their black-winged brothers and sisters. And there, riding in the centre, were Michael and Lucifer. Lucifer: God’s favourite, young and beautiful and smarter than all the rest, and one of the seraphim to boot, and Michael: the eldest, all righteous purpose and burning anger, leader of the archangels. Crowley watched as Michael smote his brother and broke all six of his wings. Lucifer screamed, and Crowley screamed with him.

The sun set with them, sending blinding shafts of light flashing through the thousands of black feathers as the angel Morningstar and his followers Fell, for the sin of asking _why_. It hurt. A lot.

But Crowley was still in one piece when he reached the bottom, which was more than most of the new demons could say. He knew that if they learned the truth about his Fall he would be branded a traitor, or, worse, a coward, and he couldn’t bear the thought of being cast out again. So he fabricated a story, one that would explain how he had escaped without a scratch but would protect his dignity, and thus his life. It went like this: he had been briefly captured by the angels and, upon his heroic escape, had surveyed the situation and decided there was no point in getting himself killed for a lost cause. He’d found a back way out of Heaven and sauntered down it, slowly as can be. It sounded classy and self-interested, things every demon would soon identify as desirable characteristics. It sounded heroic and gutsy, and not at all like he’d been crying and screaming and calling out to his Father on the way down. 

Luckily, no one had been paying close enough attention to be able to directly discredit his story, and enough precedents were being set that he was taken at his word. A little too well, actually; Lucifer’s lieutenants called on him only days later, the infamous demon who had ‘sauntered vaguely downwards’ while the rest of them had Fallen in disgrace. They told him that, to prove his worth, he was to use his secret ‘back way down’ to go back _up_ and cause some trouble in Eden, and see if he could make the old man pay for what He had done. 

There was no way out of the situation, so Crowley agreed. Oh, he made his way _to_ Eden easily enough—his wings were still in working order—but the Garden was sealed. He circled it for hours, terrified to approach the armoured angels guarding the gates with fearsome flaming swords, but equally terrified to go back to the newly-formed Hell empty-handed.

So he slithered up to the Eastern Gate, where the cherub guarding it looked a little bored, flaming sword held a little laxer than the others. Crowley slithered up as stealthily as he could, but of course he was noticed when he was still five metres off. The angel watched with interest as the serpent approached and stopped rather lamely a metre or so away. He decided it was better to be killed by flaming sword than whatever the newly formed Dukes of Hell would have waiting for victim number one.

“Bit chilly,” he commented in his least threatening voice to the angel with the golden, curly hair and crystal blue eyes.

“It appears so,” the angel responded, and his voice, though guarded, wasn’t completely hostile. Crowley—Crawly then—took this as an excellent omen.

“Don’t sssuppose you’d mind letting me in?” the demon asked bluntly, deciding the more forthright he was, perhaps the less likely he’d be seen as being deceitful or ill-intentioned.

The angel—Aziraphale was his name, Crowley would learn later—shifted awkwardly. “Er, I’m afraid I’m not supposed to,” he said, rather kindly. “So if you’d just, er, move along, that would be great, thanks.”

“Oh.” Crowley made a show of swivelling his serpentine head around and looking back the way he’d come, which was fraught with dark storm clouds. He flicked out his long tongue, tasting the heavy air. “I wasss hoping to find sssomeplaccce to hide,” he said, which wasn’t completely untrue.

The cherub followed his gaze, and his eyes softened. His flaming sword drooped a little closer to the grass, the soft white flames humming softly as they licked against the metal. Crowley edged away from it.

“I mean, what am I going to do?” Crowley said reasonably. “I’m jussst a sssnake.”

“I suppose,” the angel said dubiously.

Aziraphale looked back down at him, and Crowley lowered himself into the grass, trying to make himself appear as small and harmless as possible. Then, to his immense surprise, the angel sighed, looked all around, and motioned to the serpent that he should come inside.

Crowley, delighted and surprised at his incredible fortune, slithered in, keeping a healthy distance from the cherub in case it was a ruse.

“Now, don’t be causing any trouble,” Aziraphale told him sternly, pointing the flaming sword in his direction in a vaguely threatening manner. “Jophiel would have my head if he found out.”

“Don’t worry,” Crowley hissed back, thinking vindictively to himself that it was just what the white-winged bugger deserved. The Fall burned fresh and raw in his mind. “Thanksss, angel.”

Aziraphale muttered something about hating guard duty and then shooed at him to get a move on before anyone else showed up.

And so Crowley won entry into Eden. 

He slithered a fair distance into the Garden and then made a beeline for the first overhanging rock he could fit underneath. He stayed there for a long time, telling himself he was just taking stock of the situation while actually trembling and trying to convince himself to go through with the mission and not just hide here forever, safe from Hell and the Dukes. 

It was Adam that convinced him. He was strolling through the Garden, humming as he stroked a white-tailed rabbit curled up in his hand. He was nude as a daisy, but everyone was in those days so it wasn’t a big deal. No, it was the…the innocent air he exuded. He was pure and untouched and obedient, as much of a trapped animal in this paradise as the rabbit in his hands. Crowley had been like that once. He hated it now, seeing someone else immersed in that ignorant bliss. He had _Fallen,_ he and his brothers had been _cast out_ because of this man and his wife—because of  _humanity_. This was why he had been thrown out like so much rotten rubbish, sent to scramble in the ditches of the world with the worst sorts of people. The injustice was insufferable.

So Crowley, fuming, made his way to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which he knew was one of the two Trees in Eden that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from. The demon wound his way up its perfect trunk and laid himself lazily out on the branches.

_This_ would make everything right, Crowley felt, deep in what remained of his tattered, distraught, Fallen soul. _This_ would satisfy the craving in his gut for revenge, would make God see the error of His ways, and would please his new superiors in Hell. Succeeding in this mission, Crowley was suddenly, irrevocably sure, would make certain that he was never again in a position where he could be cast out and left alone, terrified and abandoned.

In any case, soon enough Eve came walking along through the long grass, singing to herself and stroking her very pregnant belly. Crowley attracted her over with a little off-key singing of his own.

“Oh, hello, mister!” Eve said as she stepped closer to the Tree. “How are you doing up there?”

“Quite well,” Crowley said, forcing his voice into something pleasant. “Sssay, you look a little hungry. Would you like an apple? They’re quite tasssty.”

Eve smiled and her hand was halfway extended before she realised where she was. She pulled her hand away nervously. “Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t. This is one of the Trees I’m not supposed to eat from.” She sounded apologetic.

Crowley tilted his scaled head at her. “Really? That’sss a shame.” Crowley made a show of slithering down a branch and wrapping his neck around a nearby apple, red and glistening. “They’re quite excccellent.”

Eve bit her lip but shook her head. “I’m afraid I really can’t.”

“But look how _red_ they are,” Crowley hissed, feeling a little desperate. “And feel how _sssmooth_. That’sss a good quality apple, right there.”

“I’m sure they are,” Eve said pleasantly. “And you have every right to be proud of them.”

“Yesss,” Crowley said, a plan suddenly occurring to him. He slithered his way off the apple and to an adjacent branch. He draped himself over it and trailed his head over the edge, so he could look sadly at Eve with all the sorrow he could muster in his slitted yellow eyes. “I would be really quite sssad if you didn’t take one.”

Eve’s mouth twisted in sympathy.

“I’ve been watching thessse applesss grow sssince the bud,” Crowley lied easily. “They grow bigger every day, and today they are finally ripe—perfect! It’sss jussst sssuch a shame that no one will actually get to eat them.” 

Eve looked moved, tears actually springing to her eyes. Crowley’s dejected expression was likely one of the saddest things she had ever seen—Eden had been shielded from viewing the Fall. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Crowley felt his chance slipping away. “Look,” he hissed, forcing himself to push down the flare of anger that surfaced at the reminder of the pain of his Fall. “What’sss the worssst that could happen? Why do you think God sssaid not to eat them in the firssst place?”

Eve bit her lip. “He just said we shouldn’t,” she said. “He said we would die if we ate them.”

Crowley twisted his serpentine head. “Sssounds like sssomeone wantsss to keep all the good ssstuff to Himssself,” he hissed. 

Eve shrugged, though she did look a little distressed. 

“But you sssay He sssaid they would kill you?” Crowley asked, trying to wrap his head around the situation. 

Eve nodded solemnly. “See, so I shouldn’t eat them anyway.”

“But _He_ eatsss them,” Crowley said persuasively. “I’ve ssseen Him here, eating the applesss. They’re jussst asss tasssty asss they look, He sssaid.” The lies dripped easily off the demon’s serpentine tongue. “Ssso they’re not poisssoned,” Crowley insisted. “They won’t kill you.”

Eve looked unconvinced. “Maybe.” 

“Here,” Crowley said, adopting his most hurt voice. “If you don’t believe me, how about I try one firssst, okay?”

Eve took a nervous step forward. “You shouldn’t—” she began, but Crowley had already slithered up to the nearest apple and sunk his sharp fangs into the fruit.

After a moment’s struggle he managed to tear off a bite-sized piece for himself and, despite the fact that snake metabolisms aren't designed to handle fruit, swallowed it. It tasted quite fresh and juicy, Crowley thought, but nothing out of the ordinary. _What a disappointment_ , he thought to himself.

“Ssseee?” Crowley said, flicking out his long forked tongue. “Ssso tasssty…” 

“I’m still not—” Eve began, but that was when Crowley stopped listening. Things were occurring to him one after another, a long list running through his mind of revelation after revelation. And then his eyes were opened.

Michael and Lucifer, good and evil, right and wrong, black and white. What he had seen in Lucifer as a heroic leader, spearheading a great movement against their arrogant Father, abruptly faded in his mind. It had all been lies, he saw now, carefully constructed to convince him they were the truth. All Lucifer had really wanted was power and attention. He had disobeyed, and fought back, and killed some of his brothers, and that was wrong. 

And the Fall—Crowley saw now that it had never been part of God’s ideal plan. He had created the mechanism for Falling, but Lucifer and the demons had done the deed themselves. The angels that had Fallen with Lucifer had chosen their fate, and Crowley saw that there was no sense in seeking revenge against God or Heaven—it had been no one’s fault but his own that he had Fallen. He saw God during the Fall, heard himself crying out as his divinity was stripped away, and watched his Father weep.

The thoughts stung, burning through Crowley’s mind like a wildfire. These were things no one, least of all a Fallen angel, was meant to know. The truth was that he was seeking a revenge that would not heal his hurt; causing humanity to Fall would not turn things back to the way they had been before, would not restore the bonds between him and his angelic friends. That paradise was lost to him, closed forever. He thought of the angel at the Eastern Gate who had let him into the Garden, and felt a sudden pang of guilt at deceiving him; he had done nothing to deserve such a betrayal. Then he looked at Eve, and felt a similar pang for deceiving her. This was not the right way; surely he knew that?

Crowley felt a deep sorrow settle over his soul, and only shook out of his reverie when Eve’s hand moved past his head to pluck one of the perfect, shining apples.

“Fine, then, if I eat one will you cheer up? You look ever so down.”

Crowley jerked his head up in surprise, attempting to focus on the present. 

“Here,” Eve said, and took a bite of the apple.

Crowley stared at her in shock, an unspoken warning still resting on his serpentine tongue.

Eve’s eyes grew wide. “You're right, this _is_ excellent,” she said around the bit of fruit in her mouth. She swallowed. “Are you less sad now, little serpent?” she asked kindly.

Then she froze. The apple dropped from her lax hand and fell silently into the grass.

A look of horror crossed her face, followed by fear and then pain. 

Crowley hurriedly turned and slithered back down the Tree, horrified at what he had done and not wanting to face any more consequences for his poor decision-making. He darted under a nearby bush and curled himself up there, waiting for Eve to leave before he dared go any further.

After a long five minutes, Adam strolled by and noticed Eve standing stock-still beside the Tree.

“Eve, dearest, are you all right?” Adam asked, coming closer and reaching out to touch her shoulder gently.

Eve turned to look at him, and her cheeks were streaked with tears. Under the bush, Crowley hunkered down and did his best to be invisible.

“I—I _see,”_ Eve said, reaching out for Adam, voice shaking and terrified. “Everything we did—everything we’ve done—right and wrong…”

“What are you talking about?” Adam’s voice was worried. “Are you—” His voice trailed off, and Crowley knew he must have noticed where they were, perhaps seen the half-eaten apple lying in the grass beneath the forbidden Tree.

“It’s—it’s horrible,” Eve sobbed, voice slightly muffled as she leaned into her husband’s bare chest. “I see—there’s so much _evil_ in the world. It’s everywhere. I see angels—they’re Falling—it’s _horrible—”_

“Oh, Eve, what have you done?” Adam sounded stricken, but through the overlapping branches of the bush Crowley could see him embracing his distraught wife all the same.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “It’s terrible. But also—Eden is so— _so_ beautiful.”

“What do you mean?”

“This place,” Eve said, sniffling and gesturing weakly at the Garden. “I never noticed before. It’s so... _perfect._ When compared to the darkness, the _evil_ —it’s beautiful, and we’re going to lose it all.”

Eve descended back into sobs, clutching at her husband. “It’s just—so much.”

There was a long silence where the only sounds were Eve crying and Adam comforting her. Crowley waited impatiently for them to leave so he could make good his escape.

“Here,” Adam said at last, moving away from his wife. He reached out and plucked one of the apples from the Tree. 

“Don’t eat it!” Eve gasped quickly. “You don’t want this.”

Crowley saw Adam place his hand lightly on his wife’s shoulder. “When He finds out, there’ll be consequences,” he said. “And I don’t want you to face them alone.”

“No, no, please,” Eve said, trying to force Adam’s hand down and making a visible effort to pull herself together. “I’ll be fine.”

“This knowledge,” Adam said, looking down at the apple in his hand, glistening and bright, “you said it’s terrible.”

Eve looked at him with tears still streaking silently down her cheeks. “Yes,” she said. “But I can—I’ll handle it.”

There was a pause and Crowley imagined Adam smiling at her sadly. “I'd rather handle it with you,” he said, and took a bite before she could stop him.

While Adam’s eyes were opened, Eve standing horrified in front of him, still crying silently, Crowley made his escape.

He slithered out from under the bush and darted across a patch of grass, keeping to the shadows as he ran from what he had done as quickly as his serpentine body could take him.

Crowley found the rock he had hidden under earlier and crept back underneath it, mind still grappling with the knowledge he had gained. His trust and admiration of Lucifer were severely shaken, and he couldn’t seem to regain that starstruck, blind faith in the Fallen seraph anymore. As he curled himself up into a ball of iridescent black scales under the rock, he realised that if he returned to Hell, he would have a place there. He had enticed humanity to Fall as well, in their own way; certainly Dad would have something to say about that. They had disobeyed direct orders—certainly His favourites would be punished now, taken from their spot of glory above the angels. And Crowley had done this; Hell would be proud.

But as Crowley retreated into the deep shadow, feeling the air around him start to thicken with the coming of the storm, he couldn’t bring himself to feel proud. On the contrary, he felt dirty and used. He comforted himself with the thought that maybe this had all been part of His ineffable plan—everything, the Fall, his coming here, Eve taking the apple, everything. It was nice to think he didn’t have a choice in matters, because he had already done such horrible things.

He thought over what he was, what he had been made—a Fallen angel and a serpent, now a demon but with all the anger and revenge drained from him. What was he, _really?_ —just a screw-up named Crawly. He hated the name, he decided, just as he hated what he had become. He knew he couldn’t change his nature, or return himself to divinity, or uneat the apple, but he could at least change his name. Maybe the only chance he had for living with himself anymore was in putting everything that he had done so far behind him.

A huge thunderclap startled Crowley out of his shaken reflections, and he realised with a start that He must have discovered what Adam and Eve had done. Crowley slithered further under the rock and tucked his head under his tail. 

There were no more sounds for a long while, and finally Crowley decided he had really better be getting back to Hell before a search for the cause of all this was conducted.

He slithered carefully out from underneath the rock and looked around hesitantly. He slipped his way back to the east, towards the coming thunderstorm and the gate he had entered through.

As he approached, he saw the angel that had let him in sitting with his feet tucked up in front of him on a large rock, watching the storm front move in. The angel’s wings, massive and shining and as white as Crowley’s had been only very recently, fanned out behind him, feathers appearing soft but rather ill-kept.

Crowley considered just darting past the cherub before he could be noticed, or stopped at the very least, but something in the posture of the angel changed his mind. It also didn’t help that he was now feeling rather guilty about having hoodwinked the angel so shamelessly to gain entry. 

The demon thought back over all the evil he had caused so far, and felt something like regret. He couldn’t do anything to fix most of it, but maybe he could put this right. Crowley moved closer, casting a wary eye around for the fearsome flaming sword, but it was nowhere in sight.

Crowley slithered forward and carefully crept his way onto the edge of the rock the angel was sitting on, desperately wanting someone to talk to but thinking that he was almost certainly unwelcome.

He smoothed the hiss out of his voice and said, with as much courage as he could muster, “Well, that one went down like a lead balloon.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” 

That was Aziraphale—not the Aziraphale sitting on the rock in Eden, but the Aziraphale sitting in his comfortable reading chair in Midfarthing, pen roving over his slim black journal as he wrote down the version of events that Crowley was recounting to him, which featured a considerably less terrified Crowley with considerably better witty comebacks.

Crowley broke off where he was in his narrative, blinking a couple of times to remind himself where he was. He looked over at Aziraphale, painfully human, face lined with age. “Yes, angel?”

“So I was following what you were saying—but were you really the _serpent?”_

Crowley blinked at the angel and reached up just to make sure he wasn’t wearing sunglasses, which of course he wasn’t; he hadn’t for years. He gestured to his eyes, still as yellow and slitted as they’d always been.

Aziraphale didn’t seem to think anything was amiss. “Yes, but is it true?”

Crowley took a long breath and let it out. “Yeah,” he said. “Creator of original sin and all that. It’s a lot of hype.” He shrugged, feeling that it was not a matter to shrug off at all. 

“Fascinating,” Aziraphale said. “And you said that I was the angel at the Eastern Gate?”

Crowley gave the angel another look, this one sad. “Yeah. You gave your sword away to the humans.”

Aziraphale looked pleased with himself. “That sounds like a nice thing to do.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said again, rather softer than he had intended. “It was.”

Aziraphale made a note in his journal before looking back up at Crowley. “So what happened after that?”

Crowley shrugged. “I left, went back to Hell; we both ended up stationed on Earth a little after that. I didn’t see you for another hundred years, maybe two.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale sounded rather disappointed. His pen came to a slow stop on the page of his journal. He looked down at it. He wrote something else and then carefully closed the back cover. He looked over at Crowley. “I must be done, then, right?”

“I suppose,” Crowley said, feeling the familiar urge to read through what the angel had written. “Unless you remember anything pre-Fall.”

Aziraphale looked back down at the book, smoothing down the back cover. “Not really.”

The angel stood and walked over to the bookcase, slipping the book into the last slot on the shelf, next to its brothers. Aziraphale looked over at the other volumes, each with identical slim black spines. Then he turned away. “Well, that’s done,” he said, and sounded quite like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now.

“Want to help in the garden?” Crowley asked, sensing the angel’s displacement.

Aziraphale cheered at the suggestion and allowed himself to be led outside, where the poppies were in dire need of a little weeding.

Soon the angel was humming cheerfully to himself as he set about caring for the flowers, though all Crowley could think was how they paled in comparison to even the memory of Eden.


	21. My Dear

It soon became difficult to even discuss anything with Aziraphale, as the angel became prone to sudden mood swings. One moment he’d be fine, chatting absently with Crowley about one thing or another, and the next he’d be sullenly sinking in his chair or retreating upstairs, apparently finding even Crowley’s silent company insufferable.

It was difficult to pretend this didn’t bother Crowley, though the demon did his best to give Aziraphale space and usually ended up outside or in the living room looking miserably at the line of slim black journals. Sometimes he would ghost his fingers over their spines, itching to pull one out and read it, but he held himself back. He desperately wanted to know what secrets the journals held, but he told himself that he was going to wait, and keep them…for afterwards. It was one of the few times he allowed himself to think of the impossible time that would come after Aziraphale, but he knew he would need _something_ to hold onto, something to remind him of the angel, and what better way than by reading about Aziraphale’s life from his own hand?

July was just dawning when Crowley came back from a quick trip to the grocer's to find Aziraphale conspicuously absent from the cottage. A flare of alarm went through the demon as he deposited the bag of vegetables he was carrying in the kitchen and stepped back into the living room. He was just about to hurry up the stairs to start his search for Aziraphale when he heard a faint sound coming from one of the open windows.

Crowley hastily left the cottage and circled the small stone building, feeling a wave of relief rush over him as he located the angel. Aziraphale was sitting in the back garden, leaning up against the rear of the cottage, knees pulled up to his chest, head in his hands, sobbing.

“Aziraphale? Angel, are you all right?” Crowley asked, not bothering to disguise the worry in his voice as he crept closer to the angel, afraid of scaring him off. He’d been completely fine twenty minutes ago, when Crowley had left.

Aziraphale looked up sharply as the demon neared, eyes red as tears streamed down his cheeks. He sniffed loudly but made no other attempt to collect himself. “Crowley,” he whispered hoarsely, not answering the question.

“Yeah? I’m here,” Crowley said, swallowing as he knelt down next to the angel and then turned so he could drop into a sitting position similar to the angel’s, back to the cottage.

Aziraphale seemed to shrink into himself a little, tucking his feet in tighter as though he were afraid of touching the demon.

Crowley took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He leaned back a couple of inches so his shoulder blades were resting against the hard stone wall of the cottage. “What’s the matter, angel?”

Aziraphale’s shoulders lifted in a shrug and he sniffed again. 

Crowley nodded and just sat next to him, listening to Aziraphale’s controlled hiccups and broken sobs, trying very hard not to reach over and give the angel some sort of physical comfort. He hated seeing Aziraphale like this.

“It’s just—” Aziraphale started, and then broke off. He cleared his throat. “It’s like, I can see who I used to be, sometimes. Like I can remember bits, and then others, I just—I can’t—”

Crowley felt his throat close, and he looked at the grass.

“It’s like parts of me are just—being taken away,” Aziraphale confessed, voice thick with unshed tears. “And eventually—there’ll be nothing left. I’m losing, I can feel it—but sometimes I don’t know—don’t know I’m losing.”

Crowley swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

Aziraphale sniffed. “What are we,” he said, sounding on the verge of tears again, “but the sum of our memories? What will I be, without mine?”

Crowley looked at the angel wordlessly. “You’ll be you,” he said.

Aziraphale sniffed. “Right.”

“No,” Crowley said, shifting to face more towards the angel. “We are our memories, sure, but we’re not just that, right? You’ll always be—you know, _you_ —you were you when I first met you, and you’re still you now, even though it’s been six thousand years. Time doesn’t change who you are,” Crowley insisted. “It just makes you more of what you already were.”

Aziraphale sniffed loudly, tears still rolling down his lined cheeks. “I don’t believe you.”

Crowley opened his mouth to argue his point further, but Aziraphale abruptly turned towards him and buried his face in Crowley’s chest, one hand going to clutch at the demon’s shoulder. Crowley took a couple seconds to register what was happening and then carefully wound his arms around the angel as he started shaking and crying again. 

“Oh, Crowley, I don’t want to die,” Aziraphale sobbed, fingers tightening convulsively around the fabric of the demon’s suit jacket. "I don't want to forget."

Crowley opened his mouth to remind the angel that he could always unFall, but stopped himself before the first syllable could cross his lips. He remembered his promise, the one he’d made to the Aziraphale with the clear eyes, present and ancient. He closed his mouth guiltily. “I know,” he said instead, running a hand carefully up and down the angel’s back. “I’m sorry, and I know.”

 

~~***~~

 

The longer the summer waned, the worse things became. Aziraphale started napping increasingly during the day, drifting off while reading a book in his chair, and sometimes even in the middle of gardening. This was balanced by bouts of persistent insomnia, when Crowley would have to decide whether he valued his own eight hours more than staying up and keeping an eye on the angel. Since Aziraphale usually just sat and read, and Crowley had become extremely dependent on sleep after seventeen years, he tended to pick the former.

The pacing Dr Griffiths had mentioned started up after that, with Aziraphale becoming increasingly jittery for no reason and moving nervously around the tiny cottage like he was preparing for a big performance. This would usually set Crowley on edge as well, and his eyes would silently track the angel around the rooms, making sure he didn’t accidentally hurt himself, as happened often enough these days. When Crowley wasn’t on his way to work and it was nice out, he would take Aziraphale for a walk when he got like this, hoping the exercise would work the agitation out of the angel’s system. Crowley would take the opportunity to double-check the horizon for signs of supernatural interference, but everything was as calm as it had ever been.

Crowley had taken the task of cooking over completely from the angel, even when it meant making something quickly after he got back late from the bank. Aziraphale had destroyed too many meals and accidentally hurt himself too many times for Crowley to trust the angel near so much as a microwave. This led to Aziraphale spending more and more time either absently gardening or reading, usually just working his way through his entire collection multiple times, since he’d forgotten the first books he’d read by the time he finished the last ones.

Looking after the angel ought to not have been such a hassle, since Aziraphale generally did whatever was asked of him and seemed to trust Crowley’s judgement implicitly, but it stressed the demon out to no end. He was constantly worried that one day Aziraphale would try to cook and accidentally leave the hobs on too long and burn the place down, or that he would decide to take a walk by himself and wander off, or that he would take a nap and just never wake up.

Whenever they went out in public, whether to the pub or to have tea with one of the villagers, Crowley would have to spend the half hour beforehand preparing Aziraphale and himself for the world, and then fret the whole way there about every little thing that could go wrong. He also felt himself growing increasingly protective of the angel, suspicious of every well-intentioned offer and snapping, sometimes quite sharply, at people he and Aziraphale had known for the last seventeen years. The demon usually apologised afterwards, and they always seemed to understand. Several of the women in the village had adopted the habit of baking him and Aziraphale cakes and other desserts, usually accompanied by a note saying what a good person he was. Crowley didn’t feel like a good person. He felt like a person who was losing everything he’d ever allowed himself to care about. Evidently cakes were supposed to help with that.

The bank’s business was growing steadily, with help from Crowley’s ingenious legalese. Walter Jamieson was clearly pleased with the demon’s work, but was seemingly demanding more and more of him every week, and Crowley’s thoughts were increasingly elsewhere. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was finding it harder and harder to knowingly swindle the villagers who were so kind to him even when he snapped at them, and whose presence had always brightened Aziraphale’s days.

So when Donnie walked into the bank one day and declared that she hadn’t trusted this place an inch for the last forty years but she would now like to open an account because Crowley worked there so it couldn’t be all bad, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone when the demon exploded from his desk and shouted out all the names and numbers of the clauses that would have stripped her of her hard-earned money.

Luckily, Mr Jamieson had left early that day, and wasn’t there to see Crowley scribble down the numbers he had just recited along with the loophole he had written into the bank’s legal defence, and then steer his potential customer out of the building. The demon pressed the sheet to Donnie’s chest and stormed away, feeling high-strung and worn out and just wanting to sit down and have a nice cup of tea with Aziraphale, something he’d long ago given up berating himself over wanting.

Crowley’s anger had drained away by the time he reached the cottage, where a thick plume of dark smoke was rising lazily from the chimney. As he neared the neat flowerbeds, red and white poppies swaying slightly in the breeze, he heard muffled shouting.

Crowley felt a flash of urgent fear pass through him as he hurried forward, pushed open the door, took one step inside, and froze.

The first thing he saw were the books.

They were scattered over the floor, all of Aziraphale’s old and rare and treasured volumes lying with pages spread, looking like they’d been tossed there carelessly. Disowned pages fluttered through the air from the draft the demon had created by opening the door, the light casting distorted shadows over everything.

The second thing he saw were the flames.

They were clustered in the fireplace, but their light illuminated most of the room, revealing Aziraphale standing rigidly by the hearth amidst the ruins of his precious books. The protective screen Crowley had installed over the fireplace after the blackbird incident had been ripped off and was lying nearby, giving full access to the hearth. The fire crackled loudly around a mass of blackened objects sitting engulfed in the flames.

“—don’t _lie to me!”_ That was Aziraphale, shouting at the fireplace. He broke off with a half sob and dropped wretchedly to his knees in front of the hearth.

Crowley finally found his voice, staring at the scene in horror. “Aziraphale!”

The angel gasped and looked up, doubling his grip on something long and dark in his hands. Crowley ran forward, feeling terror fly through him.

“What happened?” the demon demanded, stumbling on the scattered books. He took in the room again, looking for signs that Aziraphale had been hurt, that there had been an intruder—

Aziraphale opened his mouth as though to respond and then only broke out in fresh tears, falling backward to the ground as Crowley advanced on him.

The demon’s eyes were distracted by the bookshelves, noticing with a thrill of fear that the row of slim black journals was gone. He turned in a panicked, frantic circle, eyes searching the floor. He couldn’t see them anywhere.

“The journals!” Crowley shouted, running over to a thicker pile of books on the floor and falling to his hands and knees, scrabbling at them in desperation, searching for smooth black leather. “Your journals, angel—who—where—”

Crowley jumped back to his feet and spun, face flush with warmth as he gasped for breath, feeling everything he’d built his hopes upon crumbling around him. “Angel—”

Aziraphale was looking at the fireplace, eyes round.

Crowley felt his stomach drop as he lunged for the hearth, knocking Aziraphale aside as he stared into the flames. His eyes riveted on the flat black shapes engulfed in the flames, picking out the top one’s size and shape and texture—

Crowley plunged a hand into the flames, pulling it back with a sharp yelp of pain when his fingers brushed burning leather. Before he could think, he threw both hands forward, fingers bursting out in blisters as he dragged several slim black shapes from the flames. The fire followed him, catching on his sleeves and still dancing on the smouldering remains of what had once been Aziraphale’s life story. 

Crowley swore loudly as he dragged the rest of the journals out onto the floor of the cottage, dragging sparks and black mounds of soot with him, feeling his eyes burn with the pain. The last couple of journals refused his tortured fingers, falling to burning cinders as Crowley bit back a scream.

The demon yanked his hands back, fingers red and smoking, skin already starting to burst into severe burns. His head was drumming with pain, and for a few frantic heartbeats he just stared at his fingers as they ruined themselves before him. Then he remembered his magic and reached inside himself, quickly swamping raw power over his burned hands, gritting his teeth and groaning as the skin snapped back into place. 

When it was done, Crowley gasped and fell to his hands and knees, hastily blotting out the trails of flame still clinging to the slim black journals he had dragged from the fire. Then he took a deep, shaking breath and turned to Aziraphale, who was staring at him with huge eyes, looking absolutely petrified. There were tear tracks down his cheeks.

Crowley reached for the nearest journal and flipped it open to a spread near the centre. The pages were scorched solid black, and when Crowley, terrified, tried to flip to the other pages, the paper crumbled under his fingers, leaving dark, sooty marks on his hands.

“No,” Crowley whispered, desperately digging his fingers further into the book and forcing it open to a later page. The entire binding disintegrated under his fingers, leaving nothing but scorched paper and the smell of burnt ink. The demon grabbed for a second journal, tearing it open. 

“No. No— _No!”_ Crowley felt his voice rise in panic as he desperately grabbed at another journal, and another, and another, forcing them open and feeling his eyes burn more strongly every time the fragile, slim volumes fell to warm ash in his hands. He knew he couldn’t miracle them back, not without knowing what they’d said first, not without having read them. Crowley reached the last volume, which was still flaming along the edges as he pulled it open, breaking the binding in his desperation.

It was gone. All of it.

For a moment Crowley could only gasp, the destroyed journal falling from his numb, soot-streaked fingers, unable to grasp what had happened. Everything Aziraphale had written—from Eden to Midfarthing, all six thousand years of their shared history, and the only thing he would have had left to remember Aziraphale by, once it was over—it was _gone,_ all of it, _just—_

Crowley didn’t know when he’d stood up, but he was shaking with rage and pain and grief. “Who did this?” he demanded in a trembling voice.

He became aware of Aziraphale still sitting on the floor nearby, crying softly.

Crowley spun on the angel, breath coming sharp and fast, feeling himself flush with anger, ready to utterly annihilate whoever had destroyed his future so completely.

The demon glared down at Aziraphale, unresponsive to his question. _“Who did this?”_ Crowley thundered.

Aziraphale looked up at him wordlessly, tears still streaming down his cheeks.

Crowley dropped to his knees in front of the angel, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him roughly. _“WHO?”_

Aziraphale gasped out a wretched sob and then, slowly, raised his eyes to meet Crowley’s.

Crowley waited impatiently for the angel to tell him who had committed this unforgivable crime, and then felt his world drop out from under him.

“No.”

Aziraphale was still looking at him with those huge, terrified, tear-filled eyes, face framed by golden curls tumbling over his forehead in unruly spirals.

“No. No,” Crowley stammered. He couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t.

He felt himself stand up, stumbling backwards over the burned journals. Aziraphale _loved_ books. He would never—not his very own—not when he knew what they meant to Crowley—

The demon felt a surge of anger come over him, swamping his horror in an instant. “Ssso you didn’t want me to read them, eh?” Crowley hissed viciously. “Wasss that it?” 

Aziraphale visibly flinched but said nothing.

_“Wasss that it?”_ Crowley bellowed. “How—how _could you_ —you ssselfish, _arrogant—”_

Aziraphale turned and started crawling across the floor away from Crowley, trying to hide from the demon’s anger.

“Come _back here!”_ Crowley shouted, fury burning in his veins as he lurched forward, grabbing the angel by the back of his jumper and dragging him back towards the fireplace.

“Please,” Aziraphale sobbed, falling limply to the floor where Crowley dropped him, hands tightening around something long and jet black—

“Enough with that bloody feather!” Crowley shouted, reaching down and yanking his own secondary from Aziraphale’s grasp.

“No!” the angel shouted, hands lunging after it as Crowley cast the feather angrily in the direction of the fireplace. Aziraphale’s eyes grew frantic as he dodged forward, trying to grab it, but Crowley pushed him back down to the floor roughly.

The angel got right back up again, and this time managed to duck past Crowley and make it to the hearth, sliding on the mess of books and torn pages. Crowley hissed crossly and reached for Aziraphale again, but the angel managed to clench his hand around the feather first, which had landed unharmed on the edge of the hearth. He pulled it back to his chest as Crowley dragged the angel physically across several books and threw him to the floor, hard.

Aziraphale burst into fresh tears as he fell across the floor, wrapping his hands protectively around the secondary. Crowley had never hated that feather more.

The demon dropped to his knees and grabbed the angel by the shoulders, hauling him back into a vertical position and shaking him roughly. “Why’d you do it?” he demanded, hearing the desperation flooding his voice.

Aziraphale didn’t even try to free himself from the demon’s anger or rough hands, only curling in on himself, clutching the feather and crying even harder. It was not the response Crowley was looking for.

“How could you?” Crowley screamed, voice going hoarse. “They’re _books_ , Zira, you _love_ books—and they’re your own—your very _own_ —I was going to—they were what I—what I—” Crowley couldn’t go on any further. He broke down, collapsing from his knees to a sitting position, eyes burning with tears he couldn’t shed.

He felt his harsh grip on the angel weaken, and a moment later a massive wave of guilt and pain rolled over him. Under his hands, Aziraphale was trembling violently, soot smeared over his tear-streaked cheeks and in his golden hair, hands clutching Crowley’s bedraggled feather so hard it looked like he might have broken the quill.

But as much as the demon wanted to continue to scream at Aziraphale, to rant at him and shake him and demand an explanation for what the angel had done to him, he couldn’t bring himself to do it anymore. Because it was still _Aziraphale_ , crying and shaking and looking more terrified and alone than Crowley had ever seen him.

Crowley couldn’t bite back a sob of his own as he leaned forward and pulled the angel into a crushing, desperate embrace.

Aziraphale burst into fresh tears, leaning against the demon’s warmth as they shook in unison.

Crowley buried his face in the shoulder of Aziraphale’s tartan jumper, shaking with dry, hollow sobs. “Oh, _Zira,”_ he croaked between trembling breaths, feeling guilt all the way to his core. “I’m _sorry.”_

Aziraphale responded by unwinding his hands from the feather and throwing his arms around Crowley, clinging to the back of his suit jacket desperately, as though he never wanted to let go.

For a long moment they just sat there, clinging to each other and sobbing, but then Crowley managed to get his breathing under control and he pulled away, leaving his hands light on Aziraphale’s shoulders, keeping him in place. Aziraphale’s eyes and nose were bright red, and his cheeks were smeared with tears and soot.

“Why’d you do it, angel?” Crowley asked desperately, aware that he sounded like he was begging and not caring in the slightest. “Why’d you do it?”

Aziraphale sniffed and looked up at him, crystal blue eyes still terrified, though now pain was mixed in.

“It’s okay,” Crowley said, voice breaking as a spear of white-hot guilt went straight through him at the thought of how he’d treated the angel. He moved his hand towards Aziraphale’s cheek and the angel flinched away violently.

Crowley froze, heart constricting painfully in his chest. Then he swallowed and moved his hand the rest of the way, so that the tips of his fingers just rested against the angel’s tear-slicked cheek. He funneled magic through his hand into Aziraphale, instructing it to heal any pains it found. 

Aziraphale blinked rapidly and looked at him, surprise crossing his face.

The demon gave him as much of a smile as he could manage as his magic finished its work and he removed his hand. “I _am_ sorry.”

Aziraphale looked at him for a long time, expression somewhere between disbelief and hope, tears still spilling over his cheeks. Crowley felt his sinuses start burning again and looked away. Who was he kidding—he didn't deserve the angel’s forgiveness.

Crowley’s gaze fell on the nearest of the burned journals and he reached for it, fingers ghosting over the cracked leather. He gathered it up carefully and brought it over. 

Aziraphale looked down at it as Crowley carefully cracked the journal open, running a hand over the blackened, crumbling pages, still warm. He flipped through it, and found little he considered legible.

“They didn’t make sense,” Aziraphale croaked. Crowley looked up at him sharply; the angel’s eyes were riveted on the book, hands now scrunched in the sleeves of the demon’s suit jacket near the elbows. “I can’t—they were in my handwriting,” Aziraphale whispered, voice hoarse. “But I don’t remember writing them. And they said—they said such things.” His gaze flicked nervously up to Crowley and back to the ruined journal. “I didn’t remember—didn’t recognise anything. It didn’t make any sense. And there was so—so _much—”_

“It was six thousand years, angel,” Crowley said softly, unable to keep the anguish from his voice. 

Aziraphale looked up at him, sniffing in disbelief. “Six _thousand—”_

The demon nodded. 

Confusion crossed Aziraphale’s face. “But I—that’s not possible.”

Crowley swallowed and adjusted his one-handed grip on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “You’re an angel, Zira. Aziraphale. That’s you. Angel of Heaven. Since Eden—well, before that, even.”

Aziraphale tilted his head in confusion. “Is that—is that so?”

Crowley coughed down a pained laugh. “Yeah, angel. That’s you.”

Aziraphale thought that over, another tear running down his cheek. When he looked back up at Crowley, he looked lost, seeking answers from the demon. “Then why can I—why can I feel it? Death—it’s just—I can feel it.” Aziraphale shuddered, darkness flitting across his eyes as his hands tightened on Crowley’s sleeves. “He’s so close,” the angel whispered.

It took three tries for Crowley to successfully draw his next breath. “You—you Fell, angel,” he whispered. “You were stupid— _bloody_ stupid—and rescued me from Heaven, and did some other things, and they—you Fell. You’re human now.” Crowley swallowed. “Mortal.”

Aziraphale looked at him, and for a moment Crowley thought the angel didn’t believe him, but then Aziraphale just looked down and said, “Oh.”

Crowley felt his mouth twitch up into a half-smile. “That help any?”

Aziraphale sniffed. “A little,” he said. “It sounds a tad unlikely—”

Crowley couldn’t suppress a short huff of laughter. “You’re not wrong.”

“—but I believe you, my dear.”

Crowley shot Aziraphale a glance, and the angel looked just as surprised as he felt at the endearment tacked onto the end of the angel’s words. 

“My dear,” Aziraphale repeated, his grip on Crowley suddenly redoubling. _“My dear—_ that’s you!”

Crowley smiled a bit self-consciously. “I suppose. It’s what you call me, anyway.”

Aziraphale was looking like several things had become clear to him all at once, and he wrapped his arms around Crowley again for a long, tight hug. 

“Okay, okay, I get the picture,” Crowley said with a huff, trying to lighten the mood as he extracted himself carefully from the angel’s grip. 

Aziraphale sniffed but allowed himself to be carefully maneuvered out of the embrace.

“Here, how about we get you upstairs?” Crowley said. “Have a nice nap, maybe, before dinner.”

“Hmm,” Aziraphale agreed, and allowed the demon to carefully escort him out of the living room. They made a brief detour to the loo, where Crowley wet a cloth and spent a few moments wiping the worst of the soot off Aziraphale's cheeks. The angel kept trying to take the cloth from him, and eventually Crowley tossed it in the sink and helped Aziraphale upstairs, where the angel sat down obligingly on his bed.

“I’ll get you for dinner,” Crowley said, and the angel mumbled something in agreement.

Crowley let out a worried sigh and retreated down the stairs and back into the living room. He picked his way through the piles of scattered books and started carefully scooping them up, smoothing out their pages and placing them back on their shelves. Luckily, most of the very old and rare books Aziraphale had left untouched, and they were still sitting snugly beside each other on the highest shelves. Crowley piled up the crumbled, blackened remains of the journals and stacked them up, to be looked at more carefully later. He doused the fire and replaced the screen, and resolved to sweep and possibly scrub the entire living room the next day, aiming to pull out the dark, damning stains and the heavy smell of burnt paper. 

Most of the loose sheets of paper looked like they’d come from a stack of opened post that had been sitting on the edge of the table, though some were loose pages the demon tried to return to their proper books.

He was reaching under the sofa for a piece that had slipped out of his hand when his questing fingers bumped into something considerably more substantial than a stray sheet of paper.

Crowley traced his fingers over its edges, feeling the supple, textured material—he froze.

Heart racing, Crowley grabbed the object and retracted his hand. And there, with a few cobwebs clinging to its corners but untouched by fire, was a slim, black, leather-bound journal.

Crowley brushed the cobwebs off impatiently, holding his breath as he opened the book. And there was Aziraphale’s neat, slightly shaky copperplate handwriting, tiny as his words all jumbled together, spilling across pages and pages and pages.

Crowley felt himself let out a sob of disbelief, running his fingers over the words but not allowing himself time to read them. That was for later. The demon forced himself to close the journal and he hugged it tightly to his chest, shaking with relief that at least one had survived. 

Crowley took a huge breath and held the journal out in front of him again, looking at the upper right-hand corner of the cover, where the angel had numbered the volumes, wondering which part of the angel’s life he held in his hands.

The tiny number ‘1’ was stenciled neatly in the corner in gold pen. Crowley ran his thumb over it in trepidation, feeling the impression of the number on the leather. This was the first journal Aziraphale had written, then—from what he remembered, it covered everything from the Apocalypse to Aziraphale’s Fall. Perhaps it was the volume Crowley would need the most.

The next day, Crowley went to the bank and turned in his resignation. He was never leaving Aziraphale unattended for so long a span again.


	22. Guests, Wine, & Broken Promises

July faded to August and Aziraphale deteriorated with the summer breeze. 

He started needing Crowley’s help getting up and down the stairs sometimes, and took a dislike to walking more than the distance to the pub. Since that was only about halfway into the village, Crowley arranged for things like visits over tea to happen at their little, out-of-the-way cottage instead.

Aziraphale’s memory slipped further, forgetting everything from the Apocalypse to the little shop down the road that he’d worked at for years.

It was terrifying.

On one particularly humid, drizzly day, Aziraphale, sitting in his chair with a book in his lap, remarked offhandedly that he’d quite like to own a bookshop someday.

Crowley’s first reaction was to laugh, but he was finding increasingly fewer opportunities that he didn't feel guilty about later, so he swallowed it. “You _had_ a bookshop, angel,” he said. “For three centuries.”

Aziraphale looked at him, perplexed. “Really?”

Crowley smiled. “Absolutely. Wouldn’t let anyone buy anything.”

Aziraphale looked baffled. “Huh. Well, what would be the point if people came and bought everything?”

Crowley laughed, feeling a little better about this one. “Beats me, angel.”

There was a pleasant silence and then Aziraphale asked the question Crowley hated answering every time it was posed to him: “Why do you call me that?”

“Call you what?” Crowley asked evasively.

“Angel.” Aziraphale sounded honestly curious.

Crowley walked over and patted Aziraphale on the shoulder. “Because that’s what you are. Or what you were.” Crowley considered. “What you are to me; what you’ll always be.”

Aziraphale nodded, though he still looked a little confused. Crowley didn’t elaborate further. Aziraphale had asked him the same question last week, and the week before that, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last time he’d have to answer it.

When Aziraphale needed help getting his hair clean in the shower and had given up on shoes entirely, Crowley rang two numbers on his mobile. 

The recipients of the first arrived the next weekend, rapping smartly on the door. Crowley made his way over and pulled it open to reveal two familiar figures.

“Newt,” Crowley greeted. “And Anathema. Thanks for coming.”

Anathema wasted no time in pulling the taller demon down into a tight hug.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, the sincerity plain in her voice.

Crowley carefully disentangled himself and accepted Newt’s consoling pat on the shoulder. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Crowley said, even though it wasn’t. “He’s doing okay today. Don’t be too—just try to stay calm. Be patient with him. He probably won’t remember you.”

Anathema nodded, looking distraught, and Crowley opened the door further to let them in.

As the witch and witchfinder walked into the living room and greeted Aziraphale, Crowley found himself studying their faces. They had aged, of course, and he hadn’t seen them in person since the day Anathema had driven him and Aziraphale into Midfarthing and left them there. Newt had streaks of grey in his hair now and a healthy growth of stubble, and Anathema’s face had lined delicately, overlaying the same no-nonsense expression with marks of kindness and gentle wear. When they leave, Newt will whisper to him that they have three kids now and it’s a nightmare, thanks for the time off. Anathema will tell him that if there’s anything he needs, he shouldn’t hesitate to phone.

But for now Crowley just hovered protectively by the end of the sofa, watching Anathema’s eyes fill with pity and compassion and Newt just look sad. As predicted, Aziraphale didn’t remember them, though he did thank them for dropping by and pleasantly offered them the tea Crowley had made that morning.

By the time they finally piled back into their car—a new one now, a dark grey minivan—Aziraphale was looking rather tired, and Crowley had been patted on the shoulder all too much for his liking.

But the demon knew that things were just going to go downhill from here, and these were the only people he thought might care about the passing of the angel who had rather made Crowley’s life worth living.

Three days later, the recipient of his second phone call, which had gone to voicemail, arrived.

Crowley answered the door rather hesitantly and hovered uncertainly in the doorway for a long time.

“Hello, Adam.”

The Antichrist smiled at him sadly. “Hello, Crowley. I got your voicemail.”

“I see,” said the demon.

Adam waited patiently for him to continue.

“I know you don’t particularly care,” Crowley said at last, “but he remembers so few people now, and in any case I think it’s only fair he sees some familiar faces before he—you know.”

Adam nodded solemnly. “I understand. Thank you for phoning me.”

Crowley shrugged and stood aside, motioning him in. 

Adam had aged as well, shoulders broader and his hair finally cut shorter, into something more professional.

Aziraphale didn’t recognise him either, though perhaps that was to be expected, since the last time the angel had seen him had been seventeen years ago, and he was far easier to spot with his massive aura in any case. Crowley had felt him coming two miles away.

While Crowley put the tea on, Aziraphale and Adam spoke quietly, Crowley trying to tune his ears to their conversation without success. 

When he left, Adam looked just as solemn as when he had come, and Aziraphale was looking rather sobered as well.

“What did he say?” Crowley asked the angel once he felt the Antichrist’s aura fade.

Aziraphale shrugged. “Talked about his family. Wife, kids, grandad; that sort of thing.”

Crowley frowned. He had rather expected something more…well, unusual.

Seeing Newt, Anathema, and even Adam again had an interesting secondary effect on Crowley. It was a proper metre stick, and the demon could clearly see how time had changed them. They were all older now, and perhaps wiser; they were successful and happy. Time had left its mark on their faces and bodies, sculpting them in rhythm with the aging of the universe. Time had touched Aziraphale’s face as well, turning the lines deeper, worry lines now, instead of laugh lines. Even the villagers had aged—Bert's hair was brushed with silver at the temples and he'd gone a little to seed, and Oscar the postman had gone through several iterations of mustaches before finally settling on a full, neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. 

And yet Crowley was just as he had been on the day he first stepped foot into Midfarthing and pushed open the door of the pub. Still slim as a millionaire’s fountain pen, still with cheekbones so sharp they could cut glass, still wearing bespoke suits, though he did take the jackets off sometimes and roll up the shirtsleeves.

It was just another way he was reminded of the fact that he was eternal and unchanging while Aziraphale was decidedly not. Every morning when he woke and combed through his hair, Crowley thought to himself that his hair would always be this thick and dark, long after everyone he knew in Midfarthing was dead and gone.

That autumn, the poppies died and Aziraphale declared that he was going to try to plant lilies again.

The following night, Crowley went outside and sat in front of the flower garden.

After five hours’ deliberation, he stood up and went back inside to get some sleep, leaving the newly sown bulbs untouched.

Winter gripped the village next, frosting the trees and blanketing the hillside with a thin layer of snow and ice.

Aziraphale found reading to be an increasingly taxing and difficult task, and when Crowley asked him what the matter was, he explained in a frustrated tone of voice that there was a shadow that always managed to swing across the pages, making it hard to pick out the words.

From then on, Crowley started reading aloud to the angel, letting Aziraphale just sit in his chair and rest while the demon read aloud to him from his own books. 

Sometimes he would stop reading and just talk, telling Aziraphale stories of his own invention, often simply recounting their shared adventures or telling the angel about his own solo exploits.

Aziraphale laughed with him through the story of the building of Versailles, and gasped at all the appropriate parts when Crowley could barely explain through his own laughter and embarrassment how he had once been discorporated because he had mixed up two women and told their respective husbands the wrong lies about who they’d been having affairs with.

On days like that, it was almost like having _his_ Aziraphale back, just sitting and drinking wine together and laughing at jokes only they would ever understand. It was the best feeling in the world, for about two minutes.

When he and Aziraphale were in a more serious mood, Crowley would recount what little he remembered of Heaven and Eden. One chilly afternoon he told Aziraphale the truth about his Fall, every little last detail he remembered, all the conflicting emotions that had led him to rebrand himself as someone smarter, and suaver, and braver, someone who had ‘sauntered vaguely downwards.’ Aziraphale cried and hugged Crowley so tightly that he felt certain the angel remembered more about him than he usually did, but the next day it was as though the exchange had never happened.

Crowley was getting very used to that.

When Christmas rolled around, Crowley brought out the usual bottle of excellent red wine and they shared it on the sofa next to the fire, which Crowley kept a paranoid eye on.

They usually shared stories about previous Christmases, but Aziraphale seemed to have forgotten even their usual routine. Instead, since the angel was doing a good job of remembering most of the villagers that day, the demon filled him in on what was new with Oscar, Bert, Donnie, Faye Uphill, Harper, and Walter Jamieson, whose bank was heading downhill very quickly pending an investigation by the National Crime Agency.

Aziraphale nodded along, but he had only finished his first glass of wine when he started growing very tired. The angel soon fell asleep with his head on Crowley’s shoulder, leaving the demon to finish off the bottle of wine all by himself as he absently watched the angel sleep.

The second half of the winter was milder than the first and the traces of snow melted quickly, revealing grass browned by the cold. The days ticked by, each one harder on the inhabitants of the little cottage on Somerset Lane than the last. 

Often Aziraphale would be uncertain of where they were or what was happening, but though he routinely forgot that Crowley was a demon, he never forgot who Crowley _was_ , which was the one thing Crowley clung to these days. Halfway through February the demon made the executive decision that Aziraphale shouldn’t be entertaining visitors anymore, an activity which the angel didn’t particularly seem to miss. Crowley considered himself lucky these days if he could do so much as tempt Aziraphale downstairs for the daylight hours, doing nothing more stressful than eating and sitting listening to Crowley read to him.

There were still days that Aziraphale broke down, going on about how he could feel death coming, and on these days the angel would cling desperately to Crowley, sometimes apologising profusely, other times just crying and letting the demon comfort him.

It was possibly the most horrible thing Crowley could devise, watching Aziraphale fall to pieces in front of him like this. Some little quirk of the angel’s personality vanished each day, never to return again. Watching it play out right in front of him, and knowing how it would inevitably end—Crowley hated himself sometimes, hated the fact that his demonic nature prevented him from shedding even a single tear to mark the passing of his angel.

That was a small torture in and of itself.

By March, Crowley was about at the end of his rope, the steady downward trajectory the angel had taken burning at his core like acid.

On what was possibly the warmest day in March on record, Crowley felt something deep within him break. It might have been related to the fact that, out in their little flower garden, delicate green sprouts destined to unfurl into lilies had started to push themselves out of the dark earth.

A light drizzle was starting to come down outside when Crowley walked wretchedly into their living room. Aziraphale was dozing serenely in his armchair, looking at peace with the world.

Crowley lurched to a nervous stop in front of the angel, hesitated a long moment, and then reached out and touched his shoulder.

Aziraphale started awake, sitting up a little and casting a surprised look at Crowley over his spectacles. “Oh, hello, my dear,” the angel said pleasantly. “Would you like help with dinner?”

“It’s two in the afternoon,” Crowley said, and, after a moment’s deliberation, went and pulled one of the chairs from the table over, placing it right in front of the angel. He sat down.

“What’s the matter, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, eyebrows drawing together in concern as he sat forward, wincing a little at the movement. 

Crowley took a breath and looked at the angel. “I want you to repent.”

Aziraphale blinked at him. “For what, my dear?”

“For me.” Crowley took another steadying breath. “You rescued me from Heaven some time ago, and I want you to apologise for that and return me there.”

A puzzled look crossed Aziraphale’s face. “But you keep saying Heaven isn’t a good place—why would I want to take you there?”

“To save your life,” Crowley said honestly, pushing down the guilt already rising inside of him. “It’s not hard. And Heaven isn’t all _that_ bad, really. We’ll just take a little walk, and you can apologise and say you’ve changed your mind. It’ll be easy.”

“Changed my mind about what?” Aziraphale looked confused again, but he seemed to be picking up on the seriousness of the situation from the distress in Crowley’s voice.

“Saving me,” Crowley repeated. “Just apologise for saving me.”

Aziraphale gave Crowley an uncertain half-smile, as though he thought the demon was joking with him. “What? That’s silly, Crowley.”

Crowley took another breath and forced himself to be calm. “Listen,” he said. “Do you want to live?”

Aziraphale looked at him, and Crowley saw something behind the angel’s eyes shift uncertainly. He nodded.

“Then do this,” Crowley urged, guiltily aware of the power his voice had over the angel, and how much Aziraphale blindly trusted him.

“But I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Aziraphale protested, looking worried. “And if I sent you to Heaven, then you’d be gone, right? You wouldn’t be here with me anymore.” The angel looked like that thought hurt.

“It doesn’t matter,” Crowley said, brushing the angel’s concern away. “I get into enough trouble all by myself as it is. I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t think I should,” Aziraphale said uncertainly.

Crowley felt a surge of frustration come over him, tinged with something sharper that speared into his chest. Even with most of his memory shot to who-knows-where, the angel still refused to put him in harm’s way.

“Look,” Crowley said, a little sharply, “I understand you’re standing on principle, and that’s all well and good, but would you please look at it from my point of view?”

Aziraphale tilted his head at the demon, looking rather unhappy with the direction this conversation was taking.

“You’ve been my—I’ve been your…For the past six millennia,” Crowley started instead, “we’ve, you know, hung out. Six _millennia_ , angel. That’s a hell of a long time. And you’re the only—only person I’ve really had to hang out with. So what do you think’s going to happen to _me_ , when you’re gone?”

A look of intense sorrow crossed Aziraphale’s face, and he reached out to touch the demon carefully on the forearm. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, my dear.”

Crowley felt his eyes start burning but pushed the sensation down. “Really?” he asked, voice harsher than he’d intended. “I’m not so sure.”

Aziraphale shifted uneasily in his chair, looking distressed.

“Are you really going to do that to me?” Crowley asked, designing the question to deliver the most guilt possible. The demon was painfully aware of the desperation of his request, and of the blatant selfishness of it, but if a couple of dishonourable acts could save Aziraphale’s life, then Crowley would consider that a small price to pay.

“Crowley, my dear, I don’t—” Aziraphale began nervously.

“Just do it,” Crowley spoke over him, producing a short length of rope from his pocket. He handed it to the startled Aziraphale and presented his wrists to the angel next, hands together and palms up, as though he expected the angel to bind him then and there. “Here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale said, sounding a little upset as he looked down at the rope lax in his hands.

“It’s easy,” Crowley said persuasively, moving further forward on his seat and extending his wrists closer. “Come on. Just tie me up, and we’ll go outside and call down Heaven. I’ll even help with that; you just have to do this one thing. Please, angel. Do it for me.”

Aziraphale looked like he was on the verge of tears. “Crowley, stop it.”

“Do you _want_ me to suffer when you’re gone?” Crowley asked, swallowing down the fear in his voice. “Because I will, I can promise you that. Just take me back now, and it’ll fix everything. I _want_ you to.”

“Well, _I_ don’t want to,” Aziraphale said, a tad icily. He turned his head away, blinking back tears.

“Come _on_ , angel,” Crowley urged. He reached for Aziraphale’s hand and placed it over his other wrist with the length of rope pressed between them, as though showing the angel how easy it was. “Screw principle. Don’t die on me, Zira, _please_ don’t. I don’t know if I can—if I can make it without you.”

_“No.”_ Aziraphale looked rather cross, an unusual expression on him recently. “I don’t want to give you up, I don’t want to send you back to Heaven—and I don’t care _how_ nice they are— _I_ don’t want _you_ to leave _me.”_

Crowley looked at the angel wordlessly. 

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Aziraphale said after a moment, voice considerably calmer. He carefully freed Crowley’s still-offered wrists from the rope and folded them back towards the demon’s chest. “But no thanks.”

It was the last time Crowley would ask.

The guilt from the promise Aziraphale had made him swear was resting on him more heavily than he’d anticipated, and Crowley couldn’t bear to try again, though he felt that the angel might have agreed on the days that he sobbed and clung to Crowley like he was terrified of whatever came next.

The problem was, on those days, it took all of Crowley’s effort just to keep himself from doing the same.


	23. Nothing But the Very Best of Queen

March warmed to April, and the lilies grew taller, unfurling green buds in the unseasonably warm air. Sheets of rain swept over the little cottage, where Crowley went back to reading to the angel and Aziraphale forgot all about Crowley’s little betrayal.

Aziraphale was getting worse and worse, but on one rare sunny morning he seemed to be doing much better—the angel’s animated cheer as he went about eating breakfast was a welcome change.

Crowley, who’d had an idea stewing in the back of his mind for a while now, told the angel that he wanted them to take a little day trip out of Midfarthing, if he was feeling up to it. Aziraphale was hesitant at first, and even had the presence of mind to ask about the shield Adam had placed over the village, though he couldn’t remember Adam by name. Crowley told him it wasn’t a big deal, and he’d keep an eye out; the angel took him at his word, as he always did.

Crowley went over to borrow Bert’s car again, but the barman was busy this time so he ended up borrowing Donnie’s instead. It smelled like cats and herbal tea, but at least it functioned.

Crowley drove them south and east, and when Aziraphale asked curiously where they were going, the demon told him it was a surprise. Aziraphale nodded acceptance of Crowley’s words and looked interestedly through the window, watching the scenery flash past.

Donnie’s car didn’t have a cassette player, so Crowley turned the radio on and, daring Below to interrupt, convinced it to play nothing but the very best of Queen.

Aziraphale brightened up considerably when he recognised “Killer Queen” and started humming along, fingers tapping on the car’s door in rhythm to the beat.

Despite the fact that Crowley knew he should be saving all his energy for scouring their surroundings for anything supernatural, he felt some of the weight on his shoulders lift. All that was missing was his wonderful Bentley.

When Aziraphale started making little sliding growls to imitate the guitar riffs, Crowley felt himself grin for what might have been the first time in months.

When “Bohemian Rhapsody” started up next, Crowley allowed himself to croon the opening lyrics softly. Aziraphale cast him a sly look but Crowley kept his eyes locked firmly on the road, fighting back the smile that tugged at his lips. 

The angel joined in a few measures later, starting up with, _“Didn’t mean to make you cry, if I’m not back again this time tomorrow—”_

_“Carry on, carry ooooon…”_ Crowley harmonised, voice trailing off before picking back up with, _“as if nothing really matters.”_

_“Too late, my time has come,”_ sang Aziraphale after the brief interlude, a little off-key.

The sudden horrible appropriateness of the song hit Crowley like a bag of bricks, and for a moment his voice died in his throat.

Aziraphale managed a fairly on-key rendition of, _“Mama,_ oo _-oo-_ oo _-ooh,”_ and Crowley barely made his entrance with an echoing, _“Any way the wind blows.”_

When Aziraphale sang out, _“I don’t want to die, sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all,”_ the angel’s voice cracked halfway through but carried on bravely, and Crowley knew he had noticed as well.

Aziraphale kept singing, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the lyrical resemblance to reality. Crowley followed his cue.

Luckily, the second half the song picked up and when they switched back and forth on the cries of _“Galileo!”_ it was like the last eighteen years hadn’t happened at all.

Aziraphale continued doing his best to vocally imitate the guitar riffs, which caused Crowley to burst out in a fit of laughter, and the angel had to lean over, swat him on the arm, and tell him to keep the car on the road. They did a little light head-banging when the beat dropped near the end, and this time Crowley tried some vocal riffs of his own, imitating smashing guitar strings with his free hand.

When the song finally ended, Crowley was feeling lighter than he had in years. 

Aziraphale remembered fewer lyrics to “Radio Gaga” and “Fat-Bottomed Girls,” though he did all right with “We Will Rock You” and “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

They were rocking out to “We Are the Champions” when they passed through Chiswick, on London’s western edge.

Aziraphale peered interestedly through the window, forgetting to keep singing as he took in the city he hadn’t seen in almost two decades. Crowley obligingly turned the music down and focussed on following the traffic laws, because they were getting close to where Heaven, and possibly Hell, were most likely to have posted sentries to keep an eye out for them.

“I’d forgotten how much I love this city,” Aziraphale sighed, still watching the buildings flashing by. “Where are we going, my dear?”

“I told you,” Crowley said, a little huffily. “It’s a surprise.”

Aziraphale looked over and raised an eyebrow, but he was smiling. “All right, my dear. If you say so.”

They were passing Hyde Park when Crowley told Aziraphale to shut his eyes. “Otherwise it’s not really a surprise, now is it?” he pointed out.

“You’d better not crash us into something,” was all Aziraphale had to say on the subject as he leaned back in his seat and did as he was instructed.

“You’re My Best Friend” started playing, and Crowley quickly convinced the radio to jump to a new track, “Another One Bites the Dust,” which wasn’t much better but would have to do.

_“Are you ready, hey? Are you ready for this?”_ Freddie Mercury asked insistently from the speakers. Crowley ignored him.

“Are we there yet?” Aziraphale asked after a moment, tone decidedly whingy. 

Crowley glanced over at the passenger seat to see the angel grinning from ear to ear, eyes still closed. 

“Do you want me to hit these pedestrians?” the demon asked, unable to keep the humour from his voice. “’Cause you know me, and I’ve got no moral squabbles with it.”

“Whatever you say, my dear,” Aziraphale said innocently.

“Oh, shut up, angel.”

Aziraphale smirked but fell silent.

_“How do you think I’m going to get along,”_ Freddie Mercury demanded from the radio, _“Without you when you’re gone?”_

Crowley glared at the radio and the song abruptly switched to “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

“I was rather enjoying that,” Aziraphale complained, before brightening as he recognised the new song. “Oh, but I like this one too!”

“’Course you do,” Crowley grumbled, but with no real menace.

The demon took a turn at Piccadilly Circus and found himself flying on autopilot, remembering the curves of the road and the buildings flashing by as though he had been here only yesterday.

“Okay, angel, almost there,” Crowley said, navigating the last few streets and letting out a breath of relief as their destination came into view, largely unchanged from his memory. He pulled up in front of it, stopping Donnie’s car in his usual spot and convincing the ‘no parking’ lines to find someone else to bother.

He put the car in park and turned it off, and took a long moment to crane his head in every direction, looking for anything unusual. Everything looked ordinary and peaceful, though, and Crowley turned back to Aziraphale, who still had his eyes shut.

“All right, keep your eyes closed,” Crowley instructed, and got out of the car. He did another three-sixty of their surroundings, taking in the passing pedestrians and the cheerful feeling in the air. Evidently Soho had cleaned up its act since they’d been gone; the adult bookshop across the road was now a quaint-looking chocolate and coffee shop, and he couldn’t see even one house of ill repute. Crowley gave the passersby another suspicious once-over, and then opened Aziraphale’s door and helped the angel out, reminding him not to peek.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, my dear,” Aziraphale assured him blithely as Crowley held him still and turned him until he was facing their destination. The demon waited for a couple pedestrians to finish passing by and then let his guiding hands fall from Aziraphale’s shoulders.

“Okay, you can open your eyes.”

Crowley watched the angel’s face nervously as Aziraphale’s crystal blue eyes blinked open.

For a moment the angel just looked surprised. “The—my bookshop?” Aziraphale took a couple of steps forward, running his hand uncertainly over the frame of the window.

Crowley, feeling suddenly like this had been a bad idea, followed him nervously.

“I thought—I thought you sold it.” The angel looked over at Crowley, perplexed.

Crowley swallowed and forced himself to shrug. “I couldn’t—couldn’t really bring myself to do it,” he admitted, addressing this to the angel’s tartan jumper.

“Oh, my _dear,”_ Aziraphale said, and for a moment the demon was sure Aziraphale was supremely disappointed in him, and would demand that they get back in the car and return to the safety of Midfarthing. 

Then the angel stepped forward and threw his arms around Crowley, pulling him into a crushing hug. _“Thank you.”_

“Oopf,” Crowley managed, and it took several seconds before his wiggling convinced the angel to let him go.

When he finally managed to free himself, Aziraphale was beaming at him. Crowley felt a nervous smile twitch across his own face, relieved the angel liked the surprise.

Then Aziraphale turned quickly towards the bookshop door, sticking his nose right up against the glass and cupping his hands around his eyes. “Can we go in?” he asked, sounding rather excited.

“Yeah, of course,” Crowley said, feeling his flagging spirits lift with the angel’s enthusiasm. He poked Aziraphale in the side until the angel shuffled over, and reached for the doorknob.

It was locked, of course, but Crowley had never needed a key. The door swung open easily at his command, and he stood back, gesturing to Aziraphale that he should go first.

The angel stepped inside slowly, almost reverently. Crowley followed him in, closing the door behind them and searching around for the light switch.

The lights flickered on slowly, revealing the familiar rows of bookcases. A thin layer of dust sat over everything, lying like a cloak over the shelves.

“I did sell some of your books,” Crowley admitted, noticing several shelves lying conspicuously empty nearby, “But I think they left all the rare ones in the back.”

Aziraphale walked slowly to the nearest bookcase, running his fingers lightly over the spines of the books, leaving streaks in the dust. 

“I had them take the rent from my personal account,” Crowley continued, because Aziraphale wasn’t saying anything and he felt a need to fill the silence. “There’s enough money in there to keep it for centuries. Maybe a millennium or two. I didn’t really do the maths.”

Aziraphale ghosted past the remainder of the bookshelf and then quickly turned and walked towards the back of the shop, confident in where he was. Crowley trailed after him, glancing down and carefully skirting the spot where the grey-suited angels had grabbed him and taken him Upstairs.

The angel turned right before the narrow set of stairs and walked along the back wall of the shop, peering down the aisles and along the stacks of books piled up haphazardly. Crowley hesitated by the stairs, keeping one eye on the spot where Aziraphale had disappeared down an aisle and the other on the door.

Aziraphale returned a moment later, holding several books and looking absolutely delighted. “I can’t believe these are still here,” Aziraphale said, coming to a stop in front of the demon, clutching the books to his chest. He gave the demon another hug, this one briefer and one-armed. “Oh, my dear, this is _wonderful.”_

Crowley felt himself colour slightly as Aziraphale thrust the books into his hands. “Now hold these, would you?”

Aziraphale vanished down an aisle again, returning a moment later with several more thick, dusty volumes, which he similarly deposited on the demon.

“Er, what am I supposed to do with these?” Crowley asked when the load came up to his chin.

Aziraphale looked at him like it was obvious. “Well, I can’t just leave all of these here! Some of them are incredibly rare!”

“I can’t fit your entire bookshop into Donnie’s boot, angel,” Crowley pointed out, arms beginning to feel the strain.

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale asserted. At Crowley’s expression, the angel amended, “All right, then, I’ll just take my favourites.”

Twenty minutes later both the boot and the backseat of Donnie’s car were filled with stacks of books. Some titles it was clear that the angel recognised, and others he looked surprised to see as he piled them into Crowley’s arms. He had to ask the demon to read the titles of several aloud.

Despite the dangers of returning to their old haunts, Crowley thought to himself that it was worth it, to see Aziraphale so animated and enthused. 

When Crowley finally convinced Aziraphale that the car could hold no more, the angel walked around the shop one last time, looking rather sad as he realised that they’d be leaving soon. When he’d finished his circuit, he came back to where Crowley was standing by the door and bowed his head. 

“All right, we can go.”

Crowley felt a pang in his chest at the angel’s sudden melancholy, and shifted on his feet uncertainly. “Actually, I was, er, wondering if you wanted to walk to St James's. Feed the ducks, that sort of thing. If you wanted. Er.”

Aziraphale looked up, and Crowley felt a flutter of embarrassment at how delighted the angel appeared. “Oh, my dear, I would love to!”

St James’s Park wasn’t far by foot, and they both spent the whole trip looking around at their surroundings, Aziraphale evidently recognising many of the buildings while Crowley kept an eye out. The demon’s wings bristled in their ethereal invisibility, ready to burst forth at the first sign of trouble and fly him and Aziraphale to safety.

Aziraphale was oblivious to Crowley’s distraction, clinging instead to the demon’s arm and rambling on about whatever came to mind as memories Crowley had considered long erased surfaced at the familiar stimuli of centuries.

Once at the park, Crowley bought a loaf of bread from a nearby newsagent’s, broke it in half, and gave the larger piece to Aziraphale.

They walked to their usual spot by the water’s edge, Crowley casting a suspicious glance at two men standing nearby, one with a finely tailored suit and the other wearing a large, fur-trimmed coat. They were whispering quietly.

“Ooooh, you haven’t changed a bit,” Aziraphale cooed to the ducks, and Crowley felt himself colour as the angel leaned over to address one that had waddled up to him hopefully. The angel tore off a bit of bread and tossed it to the duck, which honked appreciatively.

Aziraphale chatted with the ducks for quite a while before the angel started listing towards Crowley. The demon quickly picked up on Aziraphale’s fatigue and suggested they sit down on a nearby bench. The angel nodded gratefully and agreed.

For a long time they just sat there, tossing scraps of bread at the increasingly large huddle of ducks surrounding them. Crowley got halfway through his chunk of bread and then tossed the remaining piece as far as he could, watching it splash into the water with satisfaction. Several ducks dived for it at once.

“Be nice, my dear,” Aziraphale admonished, continuing to carefully spread his crumbs out so the ducks didn’t have to fight over them.

Crowley sat back on the bench and crossed his legs, casting another cautious glance around them before settling back into a more comfortable position. 

It was a beautiful day, the trees just springing back to life after the mild winter, birds singing from their freshly-leaved branches. And then there was Aziraphale, looking tired but with brighter eyes than he’d had in months, tossing bits of bread to the ducks like no time had passed at all. The angel was smiling, hair glowing a faint gold in the sunlight, looking at peace in the world he had helped to save.

And this, Crowley was suddenly, incredibly certain, was how Aziraphale was _meant_ to be, now and forever. This was how he _would_ be, to Crowley if no one else, until the end of time.

The angel’s smile broadened and he leaned over to elbow Crowley gently. “Look, my dear, there’re some ducklings…”

By the time Aziraphale had finished pointing out exactly how cute each individual duckling was, clinging to the demon’s arm the whole time with one hand, it was all Crowley could do not to embrace the angel and beg God Himself to leave them in this day’s perfection forever.

Because as much as Crowley loved seeing Aziraphale so happy with the ducks, he knew he would never see it again. Aziraphale would never feed the ducks with him again, never again greet him at the door to his bookshop. This was a day of lasts, and he didn’t know whose benefit it was for.

“Angel,” Crowley said, forcing the tremor out of his voice.

Aziraphale looked over at him expectantly, with such an expression that said he would be delighted to hear absolutely anything Crowley had to say. “Yes, my dear?”

Crowley’s eyes were burning but he pressed on. There was one more last left. “If I could, er, tempt you to tea, I made reservations at the Ritz…”

Crowley mentally flinched at his own word choice, but Aziraphale just beamed at him.

“You old serpent,” the angel said, giving him another friendly nudge with his elbow. “Of course.” Aziraphale stood up as though to prove his point, but once he gained his feet he swayed alarmingly.

Crowley leapt up and grabbed the angel by the elbow and shoulder. “But we don’t have to,” he added quickly.

“No, no, I want to,” Aziraphale said, sounding mildly irritated with himself.

Crowley hovered uncertainly as the angel regained his balance.

Aziraphale pushed his spectacles further up his nose. “Let’s go.”

Crowley’s mouth twitched in uncertainty. “I could get the car…” he offered, unsure even as he said it if he would be willing to leave Aziraphale alone for even that short span of time.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Aziraphale insisted, voice firm even though his shoulder shook slightly under Crowley’s supporting hand.

The demon hesitated. “Okay,” he said at last, and turned them in the direction of the Ritz. Aziraphale looked to have steadied on his feet a little, and Crowley released his shoulder so he could offer the angel his arm instead.

Aziraphale gave him a grateful smile and linked arms with the demon as they started away from the water’s edge.

Afternoon tea at the Ritz was everything Crowley remembered. The hotel had added a new type of tea and switched out two of the desserts, but this only seemed to please Aziraphale.

Before long the angel was licking clotted cream off his fingers like nothing had changed at all, and Crowley had sufficiently dissuaded the three separate men that came their way looking to enforce the suit and tie dress code, which Aziraphale was decidedly not following.

The angel only ate two of the delightful little cream cakes they were presented with, though, and when Crowley suggested he have another, Aziraphale shook his head and said he wasn’t very hungry.

That left Crowley, who was feeling rather uneasy and looking for any way to distract himself, to down something like five cream cakes and a majority of the specialty sandwiches. This seemed to amuse Aziraphale at first, but after a little while he just began to look very tired, though he always perked up whenever Crowley cast him a worried glance.

When the demon suggested they leave, even though it was far earlier than they usually departed, Aziraphale agreed, looking relieved.

Crowley paid the tab and offered the angel his arm to help him stand up. Aziraphale took it, and he leaned heavily against the demon as they walked out of the brightly lit, gold- and white-panelled room. 

The sky had clouded over during their tea, and it wasn’t just the weather that had worsened.

Aziraphale listed against Crowley the whole way back to the angel’s bookshop, at times sounding short of breath as well.

Crowley looked over his shoulder at every streetcorner, convinced that, as this was the worst time for Heaven to come knocking, this was when they would.

Despite his misgivings, they were completely ignored and made it back to the bookshop without incident. Crowley double-checked that he had locked the shop’s door and helped Aziraphale into Donnie’s car before dropping into the driver’s seat.

“Thank you, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, sounding tired but very genuine. Crowley glanced over to see Aziraphale slumped in the passenger seat with his head tilted towards the demon. “This was—this was really nice. Thank you.”

Crowley felt his mouth draw itself into a tight smile. “Nothing to thank me for,” he said, and pulled the car away from the bookshop, the ‘no parking’ lines returning to their proper places behind him. Aziraphale twisted in his seat to watch his bookshop recede in the distance, and Crowley did the same in the mirror.

And then the demon turned the corner, and it was gone.

As Crowley turned onto Brompton Road, the first bars of Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever” started emanating from the car speakers.

Crowley reached forward automatically, intending to turn the whole thing off, but Aziraphale raised a hand to stop him.

“Just leave it,” the angel said, sounding tired.

Crowley shot him a worried glance but dropped his hand back to the steering wheel.

Aziraphale shifted his gaze so he was back to staring through the window. Crowley kept his eyes firmly on the road.

_“Who wants to live forever?”_ Freddie Mercury crooned from the radio, voice rising and falling with the swelling of the music. _“Who wants to live forever…? There’s no chance for us. It’s all decided for us.”_

Crowley swallowed and couldn’t stop himself from glancing over at where Aziraphale was sitting slumped in his seat, looking tired and older than he had looked in six thousand years.

_“This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us,”_ Freddie sang.

Crowley blinked rapidly and focussed on driving. The music rose and fell, swells of satin sound rolling over him like the tide.

_“Who wants to live forever?”_ Freddie asked again, sounding like the answer meant the whole world to him. _“Forever is our today. Who waits forever anyway?”_

Aziraphale slept most of the way home, and when “You’re My Best Friend” came on for the second time, Crowley reached over and turned the radio off.

That was Aziraphale’s last good day.


	24. Starlight

April turned to May, and the first of the lilies in the little flower garden in front of their cottage bloomed, revealing long white petals. The summer was shaping up to be even hotter than the last, and one of the hottest on record.

This convinced Crowley that his best course of action was to just stay in and look after Aziraphale, though the angel kept trying to go outside and tend to his garden. Crowley told him multiple times that it was too warm and the flowers could survive by themselves, but he wasn’t sure how much the angel listened to him anymore.

Crowley read to Aziraphale from the books he’d brought back from his bookshop, though the angel increasingly fell asleep in the middle. Even Crowley’s own stories of their shared adventures ceased to hold a special interest for him. When Aziraphale hadn’t remembered that he had once been an angel and Crowley a demon for a week solid, there was little point in trying to explain to Aziraphale that he was an integral part of the narrative. So now when Crowley recounted their shared adventures, he referred to the protagonists only as ‘the demon’ and ‘the angel.’

Aziraphale deteriorated more rapidly than Crowley thought possible, slipping from that impossible day they’d spent in London to needing Crowley’s help going up and down the stairs and sometimes into and out of his chair. Meanwhile, the Aziraphale that Crowley had spent six thousand years with faded, vanishing behind slightly unfocussed, dulled eyes. This Aziraphale just wanted to sleep and be read to, and occasionally patted him on the shoulder and called him ‘my dear.’

Watching Aziraphale decline like this, dying a little more every day, losing pieces of himself Crowley felt certain now that he would never get back…it was perhaps the worst way he could have lost the angel. Crowley had long ago stopped pretending he didn’t have a heart, and he knew now that it was breaking.

The last few weeks had also graced the demon with a series of nightmares. They plagued his nights, leaving him restless and exhausted in the morning. They came in two types: one in which Aziraphale miraculously came into himself, turned Crowley in, and unFell, and one in which he didn’t.

In the first type, Crowley was back in Heaven, pinned to that hard white wall, wings screaming and breath coming shallowly. In them, Aziraphale approached him, huge white wings restored, holding the knife Crowley’s usual tormentor had handed him. Except this time there would be no sudden rescue, because after Crowley had been nailed back into position, Above had ruled that the only way to prove Aziraphale was really willing to return to following Heaven’s decrees was by forcing him to kill Crowley. In some of the dreams, Aziraphale was crying, desperately asking Above to reconsider, and in others he was determined, and didn’t hesitate. Sometimes he didn’t even recognise Crowley, and those dreams were the worst. Each time, Crowley shied from the blade initially but then changed his mind, asking, sometimes begging Aziraphale to kill him. He told the angel that it was all right, and that it wasn’t a big deal, and that nothing could be worse than Falling, right? Aziraphale would approach him then, eyes sometimes bright and icy blue, sometimes dull and confused, and Crowley would jerk into terrified consciousness the moment the blade touched his skin.

In the second type of nightmare, Aziraphale died a human. Crowley was never there, and never saw how it happened. He would just stand all alone in the cottage that didn’t seem so small anymore, and feel the loss like he’d taken a bullet to the chest. Aziraphale never appeared in these dreams, and the heavy absence was worse than the angel driving a knife through his heart in the first type of dream.

When Crowley jolted into consciousness around three o’clock in the morning, he always padded into Aziraphale’s room, heart hammering, and made sure the angel was still breathing. Sometimes he’d fall to his knees by the side of the bed, or pull himself onto the deep window ledge and just watch the gentle rise and fall of Aziraphale’s chest or shoulder, the smooth rhythm reminding him that his angel hadn’t left him yet.

After a sporadic beginning, the terrifying dreams settled into a nightly occurrence, robbing Crowley of the peace of sleep and leaving him with only the agony of day, when he would help Aziraphale dress and wash, bring him downstairs, and make him breakfast.

Increasingly, the angel showed no interest in eating whatever Crowley made for him, and would often do little more than nibble at it halfheartedly. Aziraphale also got quieter, speaking less and less and sometimes only staring off into the distance whenever Crowley asked him a question. For one whole day he just sat in his chair and refused to acknowledge anything the demon said or did.

Then he didn’t call Crowley ‘my dear’ for a week, seeming to recognise the demon only as a familiar, friendly presence that would sit with him and recount their time together until his voice broke too many times to continue. Then Crowley would just sit, sometimes leaning his forehead against the angel’s shoulder, and try to pretend it wasn’t all happening. Occasionally, Aziraphale would give him a weak, one-armed hug, as though it bothered some part of him that Crowley was in pain.

Some of the villagers came by, dropping off food or flowers or just offering Crowley their support. The demon never let them stay for more than a minute. They weren’t welcome here, in the tiny cottage that held the culmination of six thousand years of history. They weren’t a part of this story—of _their_ story.

The weather continued to warm, breaking the records as predicted and baking the ground, drying the grass and turning the usual showers into muggy downpours. Crowley never left the cottage, unwilling to let Aziraphale out of his sight for anything.

The angel lost weight rapidly, showing interest in little outside of his own head, sometimes doing nothing more strenuous than nodding absently at Crowley. Once Aziraphale went so far as to ask him if he was okay, though he didn’t look like he heard the demon’s answer. That was okay; it was a lie anyway.

Crowley woke in the early hours of the morning from nightmares for three weeks straight, fear gripping his sweat-slicked skin as he jolted awake. 

And then, one night, he didn’t.

The soft, melodic songs of several birds singing outside his window brought the demon into consciousness. As he rolled over and opened his eyes, Crowley was surprised to find that he felt well-rested for what was probably the first time in a month.

He also registered that it was around nine o’clock in the morning, the sun streaming invitingly through the window and illuminating the motes of dust floating lazily through the air.

Crowley stayed there for a moment, just enjoying the feeling of being well-rested, and then pushed himself to his feet and poked his head into Aziraphale’s room.

A spike of fear thrilled through him when he took in the angel’s empty bed, covers sprawled haphazardly across the mattress, but he pushed it down. Aziraphale was just downstairs, that was it.

Crowley walked quickly down the steps, casting a worried glance around the deserted kitchen. The living room was empty as well, and the demon felt his heart rate pick up.

He was living a nightmare now, Crowley knew with sudden terrified certainty. He hadn’t dreamt his nightmare this time because it was no longer being played out only in his imagination.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley called, unable to keep the fear out of his voice. He ran back upstairs, double-checked all of the rooms, and ran downstairs again. “Aziraphale?” he shouted again, breath catching in anxiety. “Zira? Angel?”

That was when Crowley’s terrified eyes latched onto the cottage door, and saw that it was just barely ajar.

_Death cometh amongst the lilies’ bloom_.

Crowley lost a breath and ran for the door, yanking it open as he stepped outside into the warmth of what was promising to be an even hotter day.

And that’s when Crowley saw him.

Aziraphale was lying on his side in the grass, head and shoulders resting in the flowerbed, the curling petals of the brilliant white lilies giving him the last halo he would ever have.

“No.” The word was a whisper, terrified and hoarse, coming from Crowley’s lips.

The demon took two shaky steps forward and dropped to his knees beside the lilies, feeling with a trembling hand for Aziraphale’s pulse. The moment his fingers brushed the angel’s neck, Aziraphale’s eyes twitched open and he took a ragged, laboured half-breath. He was still alive.

“Zira?” Crowley gasped, trying unsuccessfully to pull the angel into a more vertical position. Aziraphale coughed weakly at the movement, eyelids fluttering. One hand twitched towards the demon, fingers brushing Crowley’s sleeve.

“Aziraphale, you idiot, I—I told you not to come out here,” Crowley said, voice shaking so badly he could barely speak. “It’s too warm outside—I—I _told_ you—”

The demon broke off with a terrified stutter as Aziraphale swallowed, the motion seeming to get stuck halfway. Crowley found his hands on either side of the angel’s face, praying against the inevitable with every ounce of strength he possessed. Aziraphale seemed to be looking somewhere in the vicinity of Crowley’s clavicles, eyes half-closed and breaths shallow and hitching.

“Don’t—don’t leave me, Zira,” Crowley pleaded. He reached deep inside himself, feeling desperately for his power, and opened wide the floodgates, letting everything he had wash over the angel, begging him to live. A heartbeat later every ounce of it returned to him, unable to find a place to work.

It did seem to startle the angel, though, and a disjointed shiver ran through him. Aziraphale’s eyes jerked upward in surprise and met Crowley’s. The demon opened his mouth, desperate to say something, anything, and finding nothing.

Crowley watched wordlessly as Aziraphale’s ageless, beautiful, impossible eyes, once a brilliant blue but now dulled and diluted, fogged over with confusion. The angel's eyebrows drew together, even the minute motion seeming to sap him of his remaining strength.

Aziraphale’s mouth opened and Crowley could only watch helplessly, eyes burning, as the angel struggled to speak.

When he finally did it sounded incredibly painful, and Aziraphale’s voice was hoarse and soft from disuse. “Who…are you?”

Crowley looked into the eyes of his best and only companion for the last six thousand years and saw not a glimmer of recognition staring back at him.

Crowley’s eyes burned even more, and for the first time since his Fall felt the telltale pinpricks of water gathering there. The demon swallowed around a lump in his throat as he gazed down at Aziraphale and responded, voice quivering, “Only your best friend, angel.”

Aziraphale looked up at him with those blank, intimately familiar eyes, took a tiny, shallow breath, and grew still.

Crowley bit back a sob, feeling himself start shaking. He reached out with a trembling hand and gently closed Aziraphale’s eyes.

Crowley pulled the Fallen angel closer, wrapping his arms tightly around his friend and bunching his hands in the back of his shirt. Then Crowley buried his face in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, and wept.

And if Crowley had checked, had stretched out his wings in that moment, he would have seen that they were no longer a shimmering, iridescent black, but gleaming, white, and studded with starlight.


	25. Hallowed Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to end it here.
> 
> No lie.
> 
> It was going to be sad and beautiful, and it was going to end with Aziraphale's death because sometimes sad things happen and people die and there’s nothing you can do about it. The entire fic in some ways revolves around Crowley coming to terms with things outside of his power to change, and this seemed the most fitting ending for such a narrative.
> 
> As I’ll elaborate on further in my author’s note chapter at the end, Aziraphale also forms a direct parallel with several real-life individuals, not least of whom is dear Terry Pratchett himself, who died of Alzheimer’s in 2015. It seemed to me a little disrespectful to give Aziraphale a happy ending when so many people in the real world don't receive one, especially if such an ending was slapped on cheaply last-minute just for the sake of having a “happy ending,” and /especially/ if it didn’t work within the existing narrative structure.
> 
> If you’ve read anything else by me, you know that I specialize in angst with happy endings, because I don’t believe in writing something terribly sad if it doesn’t all work out well in the end. I’m too much of an optimist for that. But I had told myself that this one time I was going to write something that ended in tears, and I had come to terms with that.
> 
> ...And /then/ I thought of an ending that was both incredibly happy and fit so snugly into the existing narrative structure that I couldn’t have planned it out more carefully if I’d tried.
> 
> So then I faced my little dilemma: respect the finality of death in real life for real people, or continue the narrative to a happy ending, as I personally wish every story would end? The purpose of fiction, and fantasy in particular, in my opinion, is to escape from the real world and just have a nice time, something Good Omens was always fabulously good at.
> 
> I mused on this for a while, thinking about the lovely Terry Pratchett and everything I knew about him as a person, as well as other books by him that I had read. I thought about how Good Omens is an inherently optimistic book, with happy endings for everyone from the International Express man to the extraneous baby in the baby swap to Shadwell and Madam Tracy getting together.
> 
> And then I said screw it, Terry would have written this thing a freaking beautiful ending, and I love these two dorks too much to leave them with anything less.

If it were possible, what came after was worse. The emptiness. The _nothing_.

He didn't go to the funeral.

Nothing made sense anymore, and he doubted anything ever would again.

Crowley sat in the rain on the edge of the pier by the little pond, trailing his feet out over the water and wondering why he had never taken Aziraphale to see this place. It was very tranquil, though Crowley had never gone there when he had been feeling that way.

There was no one else around, so he pulled his wings out. He knew his feathers well enough to know that they were the same wings he’d Fallen with, but they were white now, and as shining and bright as Aziraphale’s had once been. They were also still missing half the primaries, ragged even now from Heaven’s ministrations.

Crowley stared hollowly into the water, letting the rain catch in his feathers and streak down his cheeks, mingling with his tears.

He hadn’t cried in six millennia, but even during his own Fall, when half of Heaven was being cast down, he’d never cried like this.

Crowley’s whole body shook back and forth and he had to hug himself to provide any faint sense of comfort, all alone in the world as he was.

He didn’t understand how cruel fate could be. Agnes Nutter’s prophecy rang in his head, nothing more than a cruel joke, now that he knew it applied to him. Aziraphale, it seemed, had never been meant to unFall. Aziraphale, who’d needed the return to divinity to save his life—he’d received nothing. Crowley would have gladly remained a demon for the rest of time if it meant that Aziraphale would have lived. He had never even particularly _wanted_ to unFall; the thought had never even crossed his mind. 

Yet he had been the one to return to divinity. What a punch to the gut.

Crowley had felt himself unFall, just a little, there at the end. It hadn’t hurt like Falling had. It had felt a little like riding on a balloon, floating into the vast open sky. As he’d clung to Aziraphale, he’d felt his soul shimmer as the stains fell away. And he’d realised that the parts that said _Made by God_ and _Loved by God_ hadn’t been stripped away after all—just buried under the guilt and pain of what he’d done. It was a revelation he had had no interest in learning, not as his best friend died in his arms. What did it matter, if God loved him? That was not the love he sought.

The villagers tried to be kind; they kept inviting him to come and do things with them, but Crowley didn’t want to. He never wanted to _do_ anything ever again.

He wanted to die, wanted to just curl up in a corner and wait for everything to end, because the whole point of saving the Earth in the first place had been to share it with Aziraphale. Sometimes he even wished the world had ended on schedule, so then at least he and Aziraphale would have died together.

He wished the tears would stop, wished he were a demon again, so he could hide his pain under sarcasm and sunglasses. But he hadn’t worn a pair of sunglasses in years, and he seemed to have lost his taste for satire. Besides, witty remarks only worked if there was someone else ready with a comeback.

Everything in this world, it seemed, came built for pairs.

 

~~***~~

 

He didn’t go to the funeral, but he went to the grave.

It was a cloudless day, the sky unacceptably blue and the air unbearably hot and thick. Crowley stood in front of the grave, the patch of freshly overturned earth laid out in a tidy rectangle. Crowley thought Aziraphale would have liked to plant flowers in the dark folds. The idiot always wanted to do things like that.

Crowley wore his suit, the same one he had arrived in eighteen years ago, expensively tailored. It fit him exactly the same as it had then. 

It was far too warm for that many layers, but Crowley didn’t feel the heat, or, rather, he did, but considered it part of his punishment, for being the one that had lived.

He didn’t know what to say once he got to the grave, so he just stood there and fought back tears.

Eventually he managed a faint, “Hi, angel.” His voice broke halfway through and he didn’t try to continue.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, struggling to keep his breathing even and failing miserably, but by the time he finally jerked his wobbly legs into motion, the shadows were in a different place.

The little parish church was nearby, so Crowley walked over to it, kicking at clumps of sun-burnt earth and wondering miserably if, in a year’s time, anyone other than himself would bother to do anything more than just glance over Aziraphale’s gravestone.

The church was small and old, built of an uninspiring, dull grey stone. Crowley walked up to the wooden door and pulled on the handle. The lock slid back obligingly and the unFallen angel walked in unchallenged.

Crowley had been inside churches before, of course; standing on hallowed ground hadn’t had any real effect on his demonic self, apart from generally unnerving him. Standing at the back of this church’s tiny nave, the single room taking up most of the church’s square footage, he felt a faint sense of peace; perhaps this was the angelic equivalent.

The feeling of peace was very irritating, and Crowley sniffed angrily at the thought of his Father sitting undisturbed and uninterested as Crowley’s whole world ended.

The nave was quiet and empty, the late afternoon light slanting through the stained glass panels placed along the sides of the building. The body of the church was largely unadorned, with plain white walls and only some basic mouldings. A cluster of five brightly coloured stained glass windows in the far apse, behind the altar, drew Crowley’s eye.

The unFallen angel strode halfway up the central aisle and slid into the second pew from the front, sinking onto the hard wooden surface and looking up at the stained glass. Christ, hanging on the cross, was depicted in the centre, a halo of light circling his head like a crown. To his right knelt Mary, peering into a cradle, and to his left one of the disciples held a basket of fish and bread, looking very confused. Beyond the disciple, the furthest right panel showed a shepherd, crook lax in his hand as he stared up at a star.

But it was the panel on the far left that drew Crowley’s gaze. It depicted an angel, hands lifting the trumpet that was held to its lips. Crowley’s eyes tracked along its tawny wings, which curved stylistically behind its flowing white robe. Crowley couldn’t discern the gender of the angel, but it certainly seemed to be in good enough spirits, eyes lifted heavenward as it declared the Good News. Crowley felt the corner of his mouth tug up in a tight, ironic smile; he hadn’t heard Aziraphale preach much news about anything to anyone since the Middle Ages at least. It was possible the Crusades had given Aziraphale a fresh perspective on organised religion. He hadn’t really asked.

Crowley felt the treacherous corner of his mouth drop back down into its usual position. There were so many things he had never talked to Aziraphale about, so many opportunities he had never taken.

Crowley’s jaw tightened and he looked down from the stained glass, eyes trailing instead over the altar.

Then he dropped his head forward until his forehead rested against the back of the pew in front of him, put his hands together in case it would help, and prayed.

_Dear old Dad,_ he began, unable to keep the bitterness out of his thoughts, _I hope you’re bloody well happy. Then at least one of us would be. By the way, your parenting skills are atrocious. Appallingly so._

Crowley paused in his thoughts to pat himself on the back for sticking it to the old man, feeling a rebellious thrill in even the mental usage of the American idiom. Then the demon wondered if those stray thoughts were getting transmitted too—if this whole praying thing even worked in the first place—and, if so, if that would rather undermine what he was saying. A moment later, Crowley realised he’d been thinking about thinking about thoughts for several seconds, and shoved himself back on track.

_But that’s not the point. Zira’s—he’s dead now, he’s bloody buried in the sodding_ ground _not thirty metres away, and I hope you’re happy about that because it’s all on_ you. _Why did you have to Fall him in the first place—what had he ever, and I mean_ ever _, done to you,_ really? _Considering what those angels did to me in Heaven, Aziraphale was probably the best of the lot of them. And that’s how you repay him? What kind of justice do you call that? You claim the world is just; everything according to that bloody ineffable plan, but I don’t think it is at all. I think you just bloody well do whatever you want, and don’t mind screwing the rest of us in the process._

_And back in Eden—what did they even do? Eve took the apple because she, for whatever stupid reasons, felt bloody_ sorry _for me, and what sort of a crime is that? What sort of a crime is saving anyone—even if it was awful old me—from slow torture? No, I don’t think this stupid plan of yours is_ just _in the slightest. I think this is just_ you _doing whatever the hell you want because you clearly don’t care about anything that actually_ matters.

_And if this—if Falling an angel for saving a demon and casting humanity out for feeling pity—if this is your idea of justice, then I want nothing to do with it. If killing Aziraphale and unFalling me for Go—Sa—no one knows why, if this is part of your whole bloody ineffable plan, then I don’t want to be a part of it, do you hear me? Write me out, or kill me off, I don’t bloody well care, but I_ don’t want it. _I DON’T WANT IT._

Crowley growled a little in anger, and drove his forehead harder into the back of the pew. 

_I didn’t ask to be saved, and I never asked to unFall. I never wanted Aziraphale to—to die because of a decision_ I _made._

_And if one of us had to unFall, why oh_ why _did you pick_ me? _It’s some sort of cruel joke, right? “Oh, let’s make Crowley think that his—his—that Aziraphale will be saved. Let’s give him hope and then take it away, because that’s our idea of a good joke.” Couldn’t have just made him slip on a banana peel; no, that would have been too kind. He’s a demon, so let’s remind him of what happens when demons get attached. Then bam! Let’s turn him back into an angel, so he can never forget what happened to him, not unless he bloody well rips his own wings off, and ha, wouldn’t that be a good laugh—_

Crowley’s forehead was burning from it having been pressed into the pew and he pulled back abruptly. He stood up so quickly he felt himself get lightheaded, but he pushed the sensation away, striding out of the pews so he could stand in the central aisle, glaring up at the stained glass. The unFallen angel bristled with anger, feeling his magic snapping over his skin as he dragged his wings into the physical plane. 

They spread open behind him, gleaming a cool, unmarked white and easily filling the tiny nave. Over the last eighteen years Crowley hadn’t found in himself the energy to undertake the painful process of moulting, and the ragged gaps in his wings were still there, half the primaries missing.

_“Was that why?”_ Crowley shouted, feeling his remaining feathers stand on end as he clenched his hands into fists at his sides. “Is my whole life just a bloody _joke_ to you?”

Neither the altar nor the stained glass windows responded, and this only further incensed Crowley. 

“Oh, is that how we’re going to play it, then? Go ahead; _hide_ and don’t face me, since you bloody well know you’re wrong, you stupid, cruel, selfish bloody _coward—”_

Crowley felt his tongue burn as the blasphemies tripped from his mouth, but he kept going, recklessly pushing himself closer to the edge it had taken six thousand years to recover Falling from. 

“And _Heaven_ —what a farce! Hell’s not a patch on that place. It’s just filled to the brim with the biggest hypocrites this planet has ever seen, except they’ve had six _thousand_ years to perfect their massive hypocrisies, and convince themselves that _their_ version of right is the only version there is. And you just—just— _what?_ Upped and bloody _left?_ What were we to do—what were any of us to do?”

Crowley took in a ragged breath, gesturing angrily in the direction of the graveyard outside. “And what sort of God do you call yourself, when you let things like—things like _that_ happen? What do you—what am I—what do you _want from me?”_

Crowley’s voice broke and he bit back an angry sob. His feathers brushed against the edge of one of the pews and the unFallen angel spun, grabbing the leading edge of the offending wing and pulling it closer forcefully, ignoring the protests of his shoulder and the bend of the wing. Crowley spread the tip of his wing further and grabbed blindly at the feathers, wrapping his hand around several of the long, silky primary and secondary coverts, which were within easiest reach. He locked his fingers around them and pulled with all his strength. He couldn’t stop the short scream from tearing itself from his throat as fresh tears sprang to his eyes. He pulled again, harder this time, grinding his teeth together against the jolts of pain. 

Three of his foot-long coverts came away this time, broken tips stained red against the brilliant white vanes. Crowley threw the feathers down onto the floor of the church and glared up at the altar, shaking with rage and pain, daring God Himself to come pick them up.

“You were the one that wanted me to be an angel so bloody much,” Crowley accused hoarsely, “but I don’t want it. If—if this is some sort of _reward_ for Zira dying—you can bloody well have it back, because _I don’t want it.”_

Crowley reached back for his wing, wrapping his hand around another pair of feathers and yanking down hard like he was pulling a tooth. His wing screamed in protest, trying to follow the movement, and Crowley had to rigidly brace himself as hard as he could to be able to get any leverage. His breathless gasp of pain broke into a sob as he tore the mangled feathers free and cast them to the floor as well.

Crowley’s wing was throbbing so badly he had to switch to the other one. His vicious tug at one of his few remaining primaries proved that pulling the longest, sturdiest feathers out would be incredibly painful, and his mind flashed back to when his Heaven-appointed tormentor had done just that. Crowley grabbed at one of the long primary coverts instead, tearing it out at an angle that sent tremors running through his wing.

Crowley dropped to his knees, gasping as his eyes brimmed over, tears streaking down his face as his stomach churned in rhythm with his throbbing wings. His fingers, now sticky with his own blood, tugged halfheartedly at another of his feathers, feeling the shadow of pain before it even began. He squeezed his eyes shut and yanked. This one took three hard tugs before it tore free, and Crowley felt the warmth of blood trailing down his remaining feathers, sticking in the vanes.

Crowley’s hand was shaking as he cast the broken, bloodied feather to the floor of the church with the others.

He reached back around for another feather, fingers wrapping around the smooth, silky vanes. He tugged on it, gasping breathlessly. He was shaking very badly now, and his wing trembled beneath his fingers.

He remembered combing his fingers through Aziraphale’s wings when the angel was too lazy to preen them himself, and his feathers had been just as brilliant of a white as his were now.

He remembered himself, shaking with fever and standing in an apple orchard, as Aziraphale towered over him and demanded that he promise to heal his wings and not lose them like he had.

He remembered Aziraphale sitting in their cottage, running his fingers over Crowley’s ebony secondary, a fond smile on his face as he remembered flying.

Crowley’s hand trembled, fingers nervously smoothing down the feather he’d been about to rip out. He could feel himself still bleeding from several spots, the blood rolling down his feathers and making them twitch uncomfortably.

His hand fell from his wing to the floor, grasping loosely at one of the long white feathers scattered in front of him.

The pain dancing along his wings was jarring, reminding him forcibly of that horrible white room in Heaven. Crowley bit back a hoarse sob, squeezing his eyes shut. “Just—just let me Fall,” he whispered, voice cracking. “I’ll take his place. Please. Give him my wings, my life—I don’t—I don’t want them.” Crowley’s throat closed and it took him a wretched, shivering moment before he could continue, more softly. “He can have them. Just…let me take his place.”

There was no response, and for a long minute Crowley just sat there on the floor of the church, wings bleeding and throbbing, surrounded by the feathers he had ripped out.

Then Crowley opened his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. He stood stiffly, wings fanning out to keep him balanced. Crowley funneled just enough magic into them to stop the bleeding and dull the waves of pain, and tucked them away.

“Fine, then,” he said, not bothering to hide the pain and anger flooding his voice. “I see how it is.”

And he turned on his heel and stalked away down the central aisle, leaving the scattering of gleaming, white, blood-streaked feathers as an offering behind him.

Crowley was halfway across the graveyard, fuming silently and still feeling rather queasy, when he heard the sound of quick footsteps behind him. 

Crowley spun, ready to flare out his wings and scream at whoever dared approach him, but found himself stopping short in a bout of surprised confusion.

The unFallen angel adopted a guarded expression as Father Gilbert, the priest to whom Crowley had exchanged no more than a dozen rude words with over the past eighteen years, strode up to him, carefully carrying in his arms the long, silky white feathers Crowley had left before the altar.

The vicar gave him a calm look that spoke as much in what it didn’t show: judgement, anger, fear, awe.

He simply came to a stop a few feet away from Crowley, held out the feathers, and said, “I think these belong to you.”

Crowley scowled at the priest. “I don't want them,” he said coldly. 

Father Gilbert’s mouth twitched into a sad smile, and he kept holding the feathers out. “I don’t think that’s the point.”

Crowley scowled and snatched the feathers back irritably. “Happy?”

“I saw how you were with him,” the priest said, his tone remaining purely factual. “I think he noticed that.”

“I don’t care what _He_ thinks about anything,” Crowley said icily, mishearing the vicar. “He has certainly never bothered to spare a thought on me.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Father Gilbert said mildly, but Crowley was already turning away.

“Yeah, right,” Crowley growled. “Because you would know anything about that.”

Crowley continued walking through the graveyard, heat bearing down on him like a cloak he couldn’t untangle himself from. He hissed crossly to himself as he walked further away from the church, the gravestones becoming progressively newer as he went.

The unFallen angel felt himself slow as his feet brought him back to the fresh plot of earth like he’d been drawn there by a magnet. For a moment he just stood three metres away, staring at it, unwilling to go any closer.

Then he forced his legs into motion and sank down onto the browned grass next to the headstone. Crowley looked down at the feathers in his hands—his own, but as white as Aziraphale’s had once been. He rubbed some of the blood off with his sleeve and carefully laid them in front of the headstone, so that the edges were just brushing the cool grey stone. 

“You always did like that bloody feather,” Crowley said, voice cracking. He blinked and looked away, blearily surveying a nearby row of trees, branches motionless in the windless day.

Crowley looked back at the gravestone and waved his hand at the feathers, rendering them invisible to mortals. They would be just for Aziraphale and himself.

Crowley swallowed heavily and stood up, resting his hand briefly on the top of the tombstone. It was the first time he had allowed himself to touch it, to feel its solid permanence for himself.

The unFallen angel closed his eyes, trying to force down the well of emptiness that was trying to swallow him whole.

Then he turned and walked quickly out of the graveyard before he could change his mind. 

Crowley was halfway down the road by the time Father Gilbert returned to the little parish church, addressing his next words to the age-old stone wall as he patted its weathered surface fondly. “He’s never going to figure it out, is he?”


	26. Your Dearest Friend

When Crowley arrived home, his first impression was that the cottage was too big. It had always been rather on the small side, but now it seemed twice its actual size. It reminded him of a stage in a theatre after the performance, when the actors had left but the set and all the props remained, leaving nothing but an empty echo of what had once been.

He stood in the doorway for a long while, surveying the furniture, the books, and the piles of post on the corner of the kitchen table—now nothing more than the remnants of a shared life. There was the rickety corner table Aziraphale had bought at a jumble sale that first week, the sofa he had acquired from someone’s cousin, and the antique clock the angel had lovingly picked out. Crowley’s eyes tracked over the rows and stacks of books, recognising which ones Aziraphale had bought and which ones he had delightedly piled into Crowley’s arms in his half-forgotten Soho bookshop.

The unFallen angel looked at the bit of shelf that still lay empty, where the slim black journals used to sit all in a neat row.

He had nothing to remember Aziraphale by, nothing except that which he carried in his head. He didn’t trust his own memory anymore, knew, now more than ever, that memories could fade.

Crowley started to sit down on the sofa but changed his mind halfway through. He paced instead, long and slow, because it _hurt_ , and not in a muted, distant way. It hurt like fire, like a dagger to the chest, burning and immediate, and it was worse than he had ever imagined in all his nightmares.

Crowley’s pacing accidentally knocked over a stack of books, toppling the volumes to the floor. The sound was too loud in the empty silence, and before Crowley could even register properly what had happened he was screaming at the fallen books.

He kicked the sofa next, the pain failing to register as he swept a stack of post off the kitchen table and hurled an envelope fruitlessly in the direction of the fireplace. He screamed until he was hoarse and shaking so badly it seemed his body could no longer withstand it.

Crowley spun towards the wall with the bookcases and stalked forward. He reached one hand out to grab a volume, intent on wrecking this still, silent place that, if left alone, would remember Aziraphale even when Crowley couldn’t.

The unFallen angel’s fingertips came to a trembling stop an inch from his chosen victim’s leather spine, hand shaking. 

In his mind’s eye, Crowley was reading each and every volume aloud to Aziraphale, or the Fallen angel was sitting in his chair paging through them, or pointing something in one of them out to Crowley.

The former demon wheezed in a ragged breath and took a single step forward, running his hand gently over the row of soft leather bindings. Aziraphale loved these books. ... _Had_ loved these books.

Crowley dropped his head forward until his forehead rested against the volumes, feeling fresh tears running down his cheeks. He ran a reassuring, trembling hand over the smooth spines, hating himself for having even considered harming them. Aziraphale would have been so upset with him.

At the thought, Crowley sank to the floor, pulling his treacherous hands closer to himself. Then he pulled his knees up to his chest, put his head in his hands, and wept until he had nothing left to give.

He was still shaking when he finally dragged himself to his feet and stumbled into the kitchen, digging around in the recesses of the furthest cabinet. He drew forth a bottle of fine red wine—the last bottle he had saved for a future Christmas.

Crowley unwrapped the foil top and pulled the cork out as he stumbled upstairs. He made it to his room and retrieved the single slim black journal from where he’d hidden it under his mattress. 

A moment later he found himself in Aziraphale’s room with no memory of having entered. Crowley moved to sit down on the bed, still unmade and just as Aziraphale had left it, when the small desk in the corner drew his eye.

The former demon sniffed loudly and walked towards it instead, dropping into the chair and setting the bottle of wine and the journal on the desk. There was nothing of much interest on the flat surface of the desk—a couple of pens and a note in the shaky handwriting of Aziraphale’s last years. It had the names of all the villagers on it, along with where they worked or lived. Crowley was not on the list.

The newly unFallen angel took a shaky swig of wine, straight from the bottle.

He started going through the drawers, unsure of what he would find but knowing he’d have to look eventually. 

In the wide, shallow drawer where ordinary people kept pencils and spare bits of paper, Crowley found several miscellaneous trinkets and a single long, ebony feather wrapped in what looked like a page that had been ripped out of a book.

Crowley pulled it out carefully, unwrapping the thin paper and turning his feather over in his hands. It occurred to him that this was now the only reminder he had of his own Fall, and that he had once been a demon. It was a little disheveled, and there was a break in the quill halfway up, probably from when Crowley had wrenched it from the sobbing Aziraphale and tried to throw it into the fire. Crowley ran a finger over the edge of the vanes, and the feather became whole.

He set the feather down on the desk and smoothed out the piece of paper. It was a page from a Bible, he realised, Genesis chapter 3—the chapter that started with “Now the serpent was crafty,” and ended with “Cherubim and a flaming sword.” Crowley’s eyes trailed to the edge of the page, where it had been carelessly torn from its binding. The Aziraphale he’d known, Crowley felt certain, would never have dared to even _consider_ desecrating a book in such a manner, and to have ripped out a page from the holiest of tomes…what state of mind must Aziraphale have been in?

The former demon tried to force the unpleasant thought from his mind, starting on the remaining drawers in an effort to distract himself. The top right-hand drawer was locked, and he moved past it. The second held some loose pieces of paper, and the bottom one was empty.

Crowley returned to the top drawer, turning the tiny metal latch inside the drawer with half a thought. The drawer slid open easily under his hand.

Inside he found a folded half-sheet of paper and an envelope with his name on it. Crowley hesitated for a moment, fingers brushing the surface of the folded paper, feeling like he was intruding somehow. Then he shook himself and unfolded the paper, telling himself that Aziraphale had clearly left the only two objects in the drawer for him to find.

The paper read, in Aziraphale’s slightly shaky handwriting, “Last Will and Testament of Ambrose Ziraphale.” Crowley sniffed as he read the single line of text between the title and where the angel had carefully signed and dated it. It said, “Everything goes to A. J. Crowley, or at least as much of it as he likes.”

Crowley took another drink of wine and peeled open the envelope with his name on it, fingers trembling.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, covered on both sides with Aziraphale’s copperplate handwriting. The letters were neat and close together, and from that alone he could tell that it had been written years ago.

‘ _Crowley,’_ the letter began, and the unFallen angel felt his hands tighten on the edges of the paper. He could almost hear Aziraphale speaking the words, almost feel his familiar presence in the room.

_‘I’m writing this early, because I want to make sure I get everything down in case I start forgetting. I don’t want to forget, don’t want to lose a second of our time together…but I think this is my punishment for the wrongs I did in Heaven. It is cruel, but possibly it is just._

_‘You never asked to read my journals, but you can if you like. I understand if you don’t want to or don’t have time, but I want you to know that they are yours. I did write them for you, after all._

_‘I want you to know that I don’t blame you for what happened, not in the slightest. To rescue you from Heaven, I would have accepted death. I really would have. Instead, we got over a decade together, and I want you to know that these past years have been some of the happiest of my life. My only regret is that we could have spent more time together in our six millennia, and less time fighting as Adversaries._

_‘Among all the angels, demons, and humans I have ever met, you are the best person I’ve ever known, and the only one I would have wanted to spend my life as a human with. You’ve been my dearest friend for a long time now, and I want you to know that you are the best friend anyone, even—or perhaps especially—an angel, could ever ask for. Thank you._

_‘I’m sure these past few days, possibly weeks, have been hard for you. I don’t know how long I’ll be around for, but I hope I gave it a fighting shot. I hope you didn’t do anything foolhardy to try to save me; I wouldn’t want to cause you any more trouble than I already have._

_‘I would also like to apologise. I know what happened couldn’t have been prevented by either of us, but I feel an apology is still in order. We didn’t get the forty years you wanted, and neither did we get millennia more, and I am sorry, but I am grateful for the time we did have. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.’_

It was signed, _‘Your dearest friend, Aziraphale.’_

Crowley could barely finish reading it, hands shaking so badly and tears blurring his vision.

He read the whole thing again, and then a third time, and then a fourth. His eyes lingered unhappily on the paragraph where Aziraphale mentioned that he didn’t have to read the journals if he didn’t want to. As if he had questioned Crowley’s attachment; as though he had been _uncertain_ how much the demon cared. 

And then Crowley wondered if maybe the angel _hadn’t_ known.

He looked at the way Aziraphale had signed the letter, _your dearest friend_. 

Crowley remembered how, after his Fall, he had sworn to himself that he would never call anyone ‘friend’ ever again. Friends, it had been clear, only betrayed you in the end and broke your heart.

Aziraphale, it turned out, had broken his heart after all, but Crowley didn’t think the angel had ever actually betrayed him, not in any meaningful way. _He_ had betrayed Aziraphale, of course, often multiple times in a row, and though the angel had been unhappy whenever he found out (which was often) he had always accepted Crowley back.

Crowley had never allowed himself to have a friend after the Fall, stopped himself short of even thinking the word. Naming it meant acknowledging that it was real, and if it was real then it could hurt him. He had managed to convince himself that he didn’t have friends, not in the strictest sense of the word, convinced himself that a person like him never could. Aziraphale had always been—well, _Aziraphale_ —eternal and opposite. Angel to his demon. Light to his dark. He had assumed that, as long as he existed, Aziraphale would too, so the universe would be kept in balance.

As it turned out, the universe didn’t care that much.

Crowley had boxed Aziraphale into a category that allowed the demon to consider him as nothing more than an angel, had even called him that aloud to remind himself that this was the _Adversary_ he was talking about. To remind himself that Aziraphale was an angel, and he was a demon, and that meant they were sworn enemies. Somewhere along the line calling Aziraphale ‘angel’ had become a habit he was rather fond of, and somewhere after that it became a term of endearment, without his ever quite noticing when.

Yet despite the fact that Crowley had been a demon, and demons didn’t have friends, Aziraphale had always been there, right since the very beginning, raising a huge white wing to keep Eden’s first raindrops off Crowley’s serpentine head. Aziraphale had dragged a very drunk Crowley away from countless taverns and saved him from being discorporated more times than he could remember. The angel had never let him spend Christmas alone, and had drunk enough wine with Crowley for the demon to know that he had no sinister, Heavenly ulterior motives. They had fallen asleep on each other’s respective sofas and sometimes on each other’s shoulders so often that it was no longer a cause for embarrassment. Aziraphale had laughed at all of his jokes that were in good taste (rude ones usually got him a disapproving look, and a long-suffering sigh if he were lucky), and had comforted him when Hell or the hell the humans were creating on Earth got to be too much. And then, at the end of the world, they had stood together, an angel and a demon, one with a flaming sword and the other nothing more fearsome than a tyre iron, and faced Lucifer himself.

For the first time, Crowley allowed himself to fully realise that Aziraphale _had_ been his friend, in everything but name, for longer than he could remember. And he, apparently, had been Aziraphale’s.

Crowley wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, looking again at the letter, wondering if Aziraphale had ever realised that the feeling was mutual. Crowley didn’t remember having ever actually _said_ anything even remotely resembling it, not until…the end. It had taken six millennia and Aziraphale’s death for him to realise that the idiot angel was his _friend_.

Crowley choked down a sob and took a fortifying gulp of wine, sniffing loudly. Maybe he was wrong about it all, Crowley thought hopefully. Maybe Aziraphale _had_ known, had known for years. He read back through the letter, latching onto the paragraph where Aziraphale said as much, his clean copperplate handwriting plain as day. And Aziraphale—Aziraphale had _thanked him_. Crowley had never considered himself more unworthy of anything. Thinking back on it, he barely considered himself a passable friend, much less an exceptional one. But that was Aziraphale for you—always being far too kind to Crowley, even by angelic standards. 

“Even from the grave,” Crowley hiccuped sadly, only succeeding in making more tears well up. 

Or maybe they had had something other than friendship, Crowley reflected after a long, miserable moment. The word seemed too narrow for their shared experiences, too small to contain six millennia of—of _everything_. Maybe whatever they were, what they meant to each other, couldn’t be summed up in two neat syllables, not in any human tongue.

Crowley hiccuped wretchedly and helped himself to another long swig of wine. The bottle was half-empty now; he stared at it and thought to himself that he should keep the rest for Aziraphale. Drizzle it over his grave at Christmas or something. Then he hiccuped again, decided that Aziraphale would understand, and took another drink.

Crowley read over the letter again, committing every line to memory. He sniffed loudly at the part where Aziraphale said that he’d written the journals for him. He had hoped he could read them without feeling too guilty when the angel was gone, but it turned out that that had been Aziraphale’s plan the whole time. Maybe Aziraphale had prepared Crowley better for his own death than Crowley had prepared himself.

It was a moot point now, though, with all the journals burned to ashes. All but one.

Crowley’s gaze slipped past the neatly written letter in his hand to the slim, black leather journal resting on the desk. The unFallen angel sat up, carefully folded the letter, slipped it back into its envelope, and then tucked both it and the long black feather into the inside pocket of his jacket, which lengthened to accommodate it. He had no intention of taking either out for a long while.

Crowley delicately picked up the journal, running his thumb over the golden ‘1’ in the upper right-hand corner. He hesitated, took another drink of wine, and carefully opened it to the first page.

_‘Hello, my dear,’_ read the neat text. _‘I hope you’re doing well. I’ve probably told you what these little books are by now—I’m assuming there’ll be more than just this one (Gosh, wouldn’t that be embarrassing, to fit my whole life into one tiny notebook!)—so I shan’t waste time with much of an introduction. I’m afraid the sequence of events will probably be all over the place, because I haven't decided what order to put things in yet, so I apologise for that. Writing should always be well-organised in my opinion._

_‘I’m thinking that, to save time and space, I’ll abbreviate your name to C, and please understand that this is not because I do not like your name (it’s very nice) or because I am being purposefully secretive (we are not Russian spies, and this is not St James’s Park). Oh dear, this introduction is quite a mess, isn’t it? I’m sorry, my dear. There’s a cat outside pawing at my begonias and it’s very distracting.’_

Crowley couldn’t prevent himself from letting out a short huff of laughter. _This_ was the Aziraphale he remembered.

_‘Anyway,’_ the journal continued, _‘I’m hoping these books will be of some small use or comfort to you in whatever days are coming. Sorry about that, by the way. I’m going to try to get the events as accurate as possible, from my point of view. I may say some things you disagree with, but I hope you will recognise that this is simply how I see things, and there is nothing you can do to change that._

_‘All right—intro done! On to the good stuff. I’m thinking I’ll start with the Apocalypse, since that was rather the beginning of this whole embuggerance, and the newest stuff’s the most important anyway.’_

There was a clean horizontal line, and after that came more text, Aziraphale’s neat handwriting detailing the first time Crowley had told him about Hell’s entrusting him with the Antichrist, just a baby then.

Crowley took a moment to page quickly through the journal, gauging how long it would take him to read. Aziraphale’s handwriting was small and cramped, running to the very edges of the paper. Even if Crowley had only the one journal, it was clear that Aziraphale had not wasted any space. 

Crowley felt a sad smile tug at his lips as he flipped back to the beginning and started reading.

It soon became apparent that Aziraphale had written it in the style of a diary, and a rather private one at that. As promised, Crowley arrived by full name only once and then afterwards appeared as a capital _C._ Aziraphale’s memory had clearly been sharp when he wrote this, and there were whole sections of dialogue between them that Crowley himself had quite forgotten. Aziraphale narrated the events leading up to the Apocalypse, including his embarrassing attempt at a children’s magic show, with far more detail than Crowley would have granted it, though the angel had always been more of a connoisseur of literature than he had. After the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, the angel summarised the strange interim of years in which Crowley had come by the bookshop practically every day for five years (the only-narrowly-avoided threat of an Apocalypse did that to a person) and then covered everything from Crowley’s capture by the angels to the present day when Aziraphale had written it, which was back when they hadn’t even known the name of what was going to haunt the angel’s last years.

Crowley cried the whole way through.

It wasn’t just the way Aziraphale had written it, in such an honest, open voice that commented with the same measured interest on Shadwell’s mishap with the candles as it did them standing up to Lucifer that broke him down to tears. It wasn’t just the way that he could hear Aziraphale reading it to him, hear it in his phrasing and punctuation, and feeling the loss of his friend more keenly than he thought possible. It wasn’t that he learned for the first time how Aziraphale had conspired to break him out of Heaven, or even that partway through Aziraphale switched to calling him _my dear C_ and then later to just _my dear._

It was because it didn’t just say what Aziraphale had done or thought—it said what he had _felt._ The angel regularly paused the narrative to consider, quite thoroughly at times, exactly what Crowley meant to him. When the unFallen angel was only thirty pages in, it was clear that this couldn’t all be Aziraphale being kind or exaggerating slight truths. 

When Crowley read that Aziraphale would have fought to the deepest pits of Hell with him, in order to defeat Lucifer and stop the Apocalypse, he believed him. When Aziraphale commented that he couldn’t have been happier if Crowley came by the shop every day for eternity after the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, Crowley believed him then too. When the angel wrote what he felt when he’d successfully infiltrated Heaven and came face-to-face with Crowley at last, finding him tortured by one of his own and barely conscious, Crowley wept, because he had never imagined that anyone could care that deeply about anyone, least of all him.

Crowley had to conjure up a box of tissues and a rubbish bin before he could continue, reading how Aziraphale had killed his own brothers with a minimum of guilt because they had dared to lay a finger on Crowley and, frankly, that was unacceptable. Aziraphale described in far too much detail for Crowley’s liking just how much Falling had hurt, and how it had felt when his wings had burned, but also how it had paled in comparison to his initial fear that he had Fallen and left Crowley behind, trapped in Heaven. Aziraphale remembered very little of the trip from the bog to Newt and Anathema’s house, which was probably a mercy, though since his next recollections were of mortal pain and illness, it didn’t help Crowley’s mounting guilt. Aziraphale was quite adamant that he had chosen to go after Crowley, and accepted the consequences of saving the demon as best he could, but that didn’t stop Crowley from feeling—from _knowing_ —that the angel had suffered a tremendous amount on his behalf.

Aziraphale explained as best as he could his tangle of feelings about being mortal, including the moment he’d realised he was going to die eventually, and the moment right after, when he’d wondered how Crowley would feel about that. And when Crowley finally entered back into the story, of course, it was only for Aziraphale to discover that he’d neglected to heal his wings. Crowley remembered little of their trip to the apple orchard with Adam, having been in a feverish haze himself at the time, though Aziraphale apparently recalled it all too well, writing how terrified he had been that Crowley had given all his magic to save Aziraphale’s newly mortal life only to lose his own wings, which might have rendered Crowley mortal as well, or even killed him. This was only underlined when Crowley read through the part of Aziraphale’s narrative where he brought his wings into the physical plane to try and heal them, and promptly lost consciousness. Aziraphale had told him when he’d woken that he’d been unconscious for a long time, but the angel had neglected to mention that Crowley had ceased breathing for a whole minute, or that his heart had stopped twice.

Aziraphale wrote about coming to Midfarthing, and trying to keep an open mind. He had lived among humans for so long, Aziraphale explained, that he had supposed that living _as_ one wouldn’t be too hard. But it _was_ hard, far harder than he had expected. Meanwhile, he was still grappling with the concept of an ultimate, impending death. Aziraphale wrote of how Crowley had become upset about the angel’s eventual death, and denied it, and bargained with Adam for his soul in the orchard, and how, since Crowley had done these things, it was somehow easier for Aziraphale to keep those same emotions to himself, putting on a calm face and trying to move forward. Crowley paused after reading this, quite surprised, because one of the reasons he’d responded so strongly was because Aziraphale had appeared so unconcerned.

Aziraphale wrote about how Crowley’s presence helped him adapt to life in the village, anchoring him in his new reality. He’d been grateful to Crowley for tagging along, though he hadn’t been sure how long the demon planned on staying. He lamented what he’d thought was the sale of his bookshop, saying that it was not so much the rare books as the centuries of shared memories that he was loathe to lose. It had only served to drive home the point that Aziraphale would never get to leave Midfarthing, and that this was where he would die, probably alone. That was one of his biggest fears, Aziraphale wrote: that Crowley would get bored, as he almost certainly would, and leave him to face his pitiful, mortal death alone.

In the present, Crowley emptied the bottle of wine and magically refilled it for the third time.

Aziraphale wrote that, when Crowley had finished fixing his wings, he had collected the spare feathers and gone inside, intent on burning all but one, which he was going to keep as a memento. The angel had looked outside the window before he started the fire, and seen Crowley happily stretching his newly restored wings. Aziraphale had been convinced that Crowley was going to leave him in the morning. But then Crowley had stayed, and he was still there the day after, and the day after that. Aziraphale had noticed Crowley’s mounting restlessness, though, and thought it was only a matter of time. So when they’d finally had their row, Aziraphale had shouted at Crowley to just leave, because he was tired of having the hope of the demon staying with him long-term dangled in front of his face.

Aziraphale wrote that he had sat on the floor of their little cottage, among what precious few human things he had acquired, clutching the one feather of Crowley’s he still had, and wept all night. He had been convinced that Crowley was never coming back, and that the last words he would have spoken to his only friend for six millennia were in the form of a demand for him to leave. Aziraphale wrote that he had never been more surprised than when he opened the door the next morning to find that Crowley had returned, looking a little tired but very real, bearing an olive branch in the form of some much-needed breakfast.

Much of the angel’s recounting of their time at Midfarthing Crowley remembered easily enough, though he laughed at some of the parts he’d forgotten, and he felt his fondness for the villagers returning slowly. They were good people, and above all they were _people_ , and that was something Crowley had had precious little contact with lately.

Then things took a darker turn. Aziraphale wrote about how he’d discovered that he was starting to forget things, and how he had stared at the back of Crowley’s head for something like ten minutes, struggling to remember his own best friend’s name, before giving up and confessing to the demon that he had forgotten it completely. His greatest fear, Aziraphale wrote, had been the thought of forgetting Crowley completely. The demon had been such an integral part of his life that he thought forgetting him would mean that he had lost so much of himself that the rest wouldn’t really be him anymore.

Aziraphale wrote about identity, and who he considered himself to be, and how terrified he was of death. He explained that he could feel death’s approach, feel it like a ticking clock counting down or a sandglass running low. It terrified him, but he understood that it was the price he had to pay. Crowley had been saved, Aziraphale explained, and that was what mattered the most.

Near the end of the journal, Aziraphale confessed that he wasn’t sure what would come next, or what came after. He was afraid that Crowley might take his death rather harder than he had initially suspected, and wrote that he was taking steps to try and alleviate some of the damage he knew he was going to cause if Crowley stayed with him until the end. Aziraphale fretted over that multiple times; on the one hand, even if death was necessary, he desperately didn’t want to die alone, and on the other, he felt sure that the sooner Crowley left, the less damage Aziraphale would inadvertently inflict upon his passing.

The narrative trailed off after that, and Crowley realised he had caught up to real time. He turned to the next page and read a note saying that Aziraphale was now going to jump back to the Kennedy assassination and work forward, and weren’t these books going to be awfully confusing to read? Crowley felt his mouth twitch up into a half-smile, pushing at his tear-stained cheeks. He sniffed loudly and kept reading, jumping back this time to a sunny day in November of 1963, when both Aziraphale and Crowley found themselves inexplicably ordered by their respective superiors to take a trip to America…

Even though the last pages of the book were lighter in tone, Aziraphale clearly making an attempt to not spoil their earlier adventures with the sad ending that was currently playing out in their lives, Crowley sobbed all the way through in a manner which was most embarrassing. Though, honestly, he had stopped caring what was thought of him months ago. Years, maybe.

Because, in a way, reading about how happy they had been just made the present that much more miserable. The past was full of a joy that Crowley knew deep down he would never feel again, not if he lived for another six thousand years.

The journal broke off rather abruptly halfway through Aziraphale getting instructions from the Metatron about this new thing the humans were doing, something about going to the _moon_ , of all places, and there was a little note saying Crowley ought to carry on to the next volume if he wanted to hear Aziraphale making a very funny joke about astronauts that would go completely over the Metatron’s head. 

Crowley knew he would never know what the joke was, knew that everything he had left of Aziraphale was what was contained in this journal. The unFallen angel felt the loss of the other volumes very keenly, desperate to lose himself in Aziraphale’s excellent prose, because if the rest were anywhere near this good, the angel might have succeeded in keeping Crowley out of too deep of a depression for quite a while. 

But he knew that wasn’t how reading the journals would have gone. By the end, Aziraphale had completely forgotten Eden, so perhaps it would have been worse, watching as the angel’s prose slipped, leaving gaps in the narrative that mirrored his decline far too closely for Crowley’s liking. He wondered what clever anecdotes Aziraphale would have had to make about Eden, had he written the journals chronologically, and knew that he would never know. What had the angel first thought of him, the serpent who had single-handedly convinced humanity to Fall? 

Why had he never bothered to ask?

Crowley read the whole journal again, cover to cover, managing to keep more of the tears down this time and hating himself whenever Aziraphale recalled how much something had hurt. The angel always followed those sections with a bit about how it was in no way Crowley’s fault, or not to worry, as though he’d sensed that some future Crowley would linger on those passages, wondering how he could have let such pain be inflicted upon the angel.

It was getting very late by the time Crowley finished his second read-through, though it was still a struggle to convince himself to abandon the empty wine bottle and walk back to his own room. It took a long time for him to stop shaking with tears and hiccuping long enough to drift into a mercifully alcohol-induced sleep, arms wrapped tightly around the slim black journal.


	27. It Takes a Village

The next morning, only four days after Aziraphale had breathed his last, Crowley forced himself to get up and go outside. He walked into the village, taking severely measured breaths and willing himself not to burst into tears. He didn’t make it very far before he had to turn around and go back. He read the journal again. Later that afternoon, because people kept coming and knocking on the door and asking if he was okay, he went out again, successfully pulling himself together long enough to reach the pub. He miracled a pair of sunglasses into existence and shoved them onto his nose as he made his way inside, using the privacy of the dark plastic to hide his red-rimmed eyes.

Bert looked at him with concern as the former demon slid into his usual seat, Aziraphale’s spot conspicuously empty next to him.

“Regular, please,” Crowley said hoarsely, not trusting his voice with anything else. 

Bert gave him another worried look, and when he returned a moment later, he deposited a glass of water in front of the unFallen angel. Crowley looked at it irritably and then up at the barman.

“I can handle it,” he said, a little crossly.

Bert’s face softened and Crowley felt a pang of guilt. He reminded himself that Bert had known Aziraphale pretty well, too—or at least the version of himself he had presented to the village, which was more or less the same Aziraphale, just sans the wings and six millennia.

“I’d prefer it if you drank some water first,” Bert said, though he started filling a glass with lager as he spoke. “It’s bloody hot outside; a person’s got to stay hydrated.”

Crowley gave a dry, humourless laugh, but he drank the water anyway, because Bert was just trying to be kind. He didn’t know that dehydration was no obstacle to demons—or to angels, either, for that matter.

Bert hovered nearby as Crowley started in on his pint, relishing the way the alcohol dulled the pain a little. Crowley alternated between taking sips and staring moodily at the back wall of the pub, trying not to remember the way Aziraphale had sat beside him for the last eighteen years. 

The pub started getting full a little after that, and Crowley quickly drained his glass, left Bert twice the amount he owed, thanked him for the water, and left. 

He returned to what had once been his and Aziraphale’s cottage to find a large tin of what looked like some kind of fruit cake sitting on his doorstep, with a handwritten note saying it was from Donnie, and that he was welcome to come over any time he liked for anything.

Crowley couldn’t even muster up his usual scowl at the sight of such pity aimed in his direction, only picking up the cake and letting himself in. He pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes miserably with the back of his hand before tossing the shades into the corner of the counter.

After a long moment’s deliberation looking at the small mountain of miscellaneous foodstuffs that had been dropped at his doorstep or delivered by their postman, Crowley just sat down on the living room floor with a fork and ate half of Donnie’s cake, trying not to sob at the thought of Aziraphale turning down cream cakes at the Ritz.

The following day, Crowley was rather surprised when Harper showed up at his door and asked if he could come in.

Crowley shrugged noncommittally; he had spent the early hours of the morning curled up in his bed wishing for death to take him in his sleep, so if the owner of the cafe wanted to come in and eye up Aziraphale’s book collection, he was more than welcome to.

Crowley parked himself on the sofa, planning on doing nothing more strenuous than staring into the fireplace and maybe conjuring up some more alcohol, though ten minutes later Harper shoved a plate of eggs and bacon into his hands.

They smelled delicious, but Crowley had created temptation and merely turned his head away, leaving the plate lying on his lap.

“They’re quite good, I promise,” Harper said, sliding a fork onto the plate.

Crowley refused to respond, mind skipping back to every morning he and Aziraphale had made breakfast together, pausing to replay the times the angel had botched the attempt with some flustered motion. 

Some time later Crowley realised that Harper was sitting across from him in one of the chairs from the table that he had dragged over next to the hearth, and was calmly paging through a magazine. He also registered that several hours had passed, and the eggs and bacon were still sitting on his lap, cold and untouched.

“You’re still here?” Crowley grumbled, realising as he spoke that his cheeks were slick with tears he didn’t remember shedding. He raised a hand to wipe at them angrily.

“Wife kicked me out,” Harper supplied, looking up from his magazine. “You know how it is.”

Crowley felt some part of him twitch in what might have been amusement, but it quickly died before it could reach his lips. It seemed everything in him died these days.

“We’re starting to remodel the loo,” Harper continued, as though he thought Crowley cared. “Mara says turquoise would look nice, but whatever was wrong with white? I just don’t know.”

Crowley, utterly uninterested, wondered detachedly what the best way to get rid of the cafe owner was.

“Reminds me of when we re-did the kitchen, right after Mara moved in,” Harper continued blithely. “Ziraphale came over and helped us, since we needed an extra set of hands to get the cabinets in. Course, we still ended up putting them in crooked as can be the first time; there are still extra holes in the wall.” Harper paused and smiled, gazing off into the middle distance somewhere over Crowley’s shoulder. “And of course he was ever so kind letting me see those books of his. I’d never seen an incunable before, and haven’t since. A friend of mine from Uni gets ever so jealous whenever I mention it.”

Crowley took in the words with only a modicum of interest, looking sadly at the rashers in his lap. He really did love bacon.

“And then there was that time Mara’s father came over,” Harper continued, “and he was convinced I was going to elope with her instead of having a proper wedding, and I was sweating bullets because I hadn’t figured out how to propose yet and Mara was standing _right there,_ and if Ziraphale hadn’t overheard what we were talking about and walked over, bumped into me, and 'accidentally' spilled water all over my shirt, I don’t know how I would have got out of there alive.”

Harper had more stories like these, and after a while Crowley found himself listening along, remembering some of the incidents and hearing about others for the first time. 

When Harper finally left, after making Crowley dinner as well as lunch, he clapped the unFallen angel on the shoulder and told him to take it easy.

Crowley didn’t think any more of it until the following morning, when Faye Uphill, the local seamstress, arrived at his door and asked if she could come in.

It was much the same routine, with Faye making him some food he ate grudgingly while she reminisced aloud about Aziraphale. She started crying halfway through, but since Crowley had been sniffing himself all day, he just silently handed her the tissue box and she carried on bravely.

And the day after that it was Bert, and then Donnie, and Oscar the postman the day after, and then several women from the sewing club, and old Jack Livingstone from the little corner shop, and the other employees at the cafe, and a waitress from the pub, and one of Crowley’s old coworkers from the bank, who had taken over after Walter Jamieson was suspended pending a criminal trial.

There were people Crowley knew only by name or by sight, people who had existed in Aziraphale’s world but not his own, and people he hadn’t seen in five years or more. And they all came, and sat in his and Aziraphale’s living room, and talked to him.

They spoke about how the angel had always been a friendly presence, and how he’d always been so earnest and open. He’d helped someone’s daughter get a surprise A in their History GCSE, tipped the waitress generously, and encouraged Oscar to enter his much-loved chrysanthemums at a local flower show. The postman even showed Crowley the engraved trowel he’d won for his efforts, explaining that the angel had encouraged him to follow his passions when he’d been too timid to do so himself.

Aziraphale had helped one of the women from the sewing club recover from the sudden loss of her husband, and convinced another that she could still go back to Uni and get a degree if that’s what she wanted. He’d talked a distraught young man who’d walked into the corner shop looking to buy a pack of cigarettes into buying gum instead, and helped Bert paint his spare room.

Crowley actually smiled when the barman related that last story, because he remembered all too well the droplets of green paint both Crowley and Aziraphale had ended up with scattered in their hair when the angel gave the roller a too-enthusiastic push at a patch of wall above their heads.

And on the stories went; and on and on and on.

It took Crowley four days to realise that the villagers weren’t coming because they also felt lost and at sea without Aziraphale. It took another two to realise that they must be there for him, and by the end of the week it had finally occurred to the unFallen angel that they were switching on and off suicide watch.

In retrospect, it was hardly surprising, though Crowley honestly didn’t know if it was necessary. After six thousand years of the worst Heaven, Hell, and humanity could throw at him, he rather suspected that if he had been inclined to do himself in, he would have done so already. 

On the other hand, the future had never before seemed quite this bleak. At least back then there were still orders coming in from Below, and divine plots to thwart from Above, and Aziraphale hovering somewhere in between. At least then he’d known who he was, and understood his purpose.

Now, he just…he didn’t know what he was, didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

What was the purpose of an unFallen angel? He was original sin redeemed; an impossible paradox. Hell, Crowley felt sure, no longer wanted him, and Heaven would never take him.

He was in between, and stuck there. That wouldn’t have been so bad—in fact, he would have jumped at such an opportunity for most of his life—except for the fact that he was now _alone_. Entirely, eternally, ineffably alone.

He would have taken torture at Heaven’s hand any day.

The villagers kept a close eye on him for two weeks, and though the hole in his heart didn’t grow any smaller, perhaps bits of it had been shored up.

The regular visits tapered off after that, though Bert usually dropped by every few days if Crowley didn’t show up at the pub, to make sure he was still eating.

In fact, Crowley _wasn’t_ eating, but he could have starved himself for a year and not lost a single pound, so Bert always assumed he was still sustaining himself somehow.

Though getting utterly hammered at the pub sounded like a fine idea to Crowley on most days, it was far too public a place for him to break down, particularly if he started babbling on about Russian headwear and the Apocalypse, and he still had enough presence of mind to recognise that that was not an ideal situation.

So he sat on the floor of their living room instead, leaning his back against the sofa, and drank himself senseless in private. He used the same bottle he had drained before, the one he’d saved for a shared Christmas that would never come. It was always full to the brim when he reached for it, and though it wasn’t a great wine, it had enough alcohol in it to dull his taste buds pretty quickly. Some nights it had more alcohol than others, and on those occasions it went down hot and sharp like vodka, burning at his throat and dulling the stabbing pain in his chest.

If he could just forget Aziraphale, Crowley reasoned through a haze of pain and alcohol, then it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Aziraphale had forgotten him; surely he had the same right?

But then he would hiccup wretchedly and set the bottle aside for the moment, and think to himself that he was the only one who cared enough to remember Aziraphale for everything he had been, and he couldn’t abandon the angel’s memory like the angel had abandoned him.

So he sat and sobbed until it hurt to breathe, and drank until he felt ill, but still he couldn’t shake the aching pain or the memory of Aziraphale. The angel died in his arms over and over again, looking up at him with those blank eyes, breath catching in his throat.

Crowley knew that Aziraphale hadn’t wanted to die alone, but since he hadn’t recognised or remembered Crowley at the end, in a way it was like he had anyway.

For nine days in a row, Crowley drank until he blacked out. On the tenth, he woke to find someone shaking his shoulder roughly.

By the time he managed to drag himself into enough of a semblance of consciousness to recognise that he was sprawled on the floor, neck and back sore and cramped, he also noticed that Bert was kneeling next to him, shaking his shoulder and sounding incredibly worried as he called the former demon’s name.

“Irm fine,” Crowley mumbled, voice quiet and rasping. He groaned for a moment as his head exploded in agony. 

“Crowley, hang on, I’m going to phone 999—”

“Ngh.” Crowley raised a hand and waved it around vaguely, stalling the barman. He was trembling a little and could feel the alcohol still burning through his system, sitting heavy in his bloodstream and poisoning his liver. He reached inside himself with as much concentration as he could muster and vaporised the alcohol in an instant.

The unFallen angel winced and groaned a little, feeling the hangover recede as the pain of the physical world returned. His throat was dry and crying out for water, and with the return of his senses to their regular positions came the endless dark void that yawned inside him whenever he was conscious.

Crowley forced himself into a sitting position, running a shaking hand through his hair, which was unwashed and getting rather long. “See? I’m fine,” he said, flashing Bert what would have once been a winning smile but came out as a heartbroken grimace. He usually had the angel to commiserate with after detoxing from too much alcohol.

Bert was looking incredibly alarmed, but now wariness and uncertainty were also written on his face.

“Just had the one bottle,” Crowley said truthfully, indicating the empty bottle lying next to him. He raised the back of his hand to his forehead, feeling the warmth there receding. 

“You’re sure?” Bert asked, looking very sceptical.

Crowley shrugged. “Just give me some water and I’ll be fine.” The unFallen angel moved to stand, wincing as his legs quivered for a moment before deciding to support him. Bert jumped to his feet next to him, hovering with hands at the ready in case Crowley were to stumble.

“I’m fine, Bert,” Crowley assured him, blinking at his dry eyes as he staggered towards the kitchen. He wanted to just stick his entire head under the tap, but Bert probably wouldn’t have taken that as a good sign, so he fished one of the few clean glasses left out of the cabinet and ran that under the tap instead.

“I don’t think you should be staying here all by yourself,” Bert said kindly.

“Well, tough luck,” Crowley growled, pulling the glass out from under the flow of water and draining it.

From behind him there was an uncertain silence, and Crowley could tell Bert was wondering how much he wanted to intervene. Crowley just wished he would leave. As if talking to any of these humans was going to somehow fix the damage six millennia had wrought.

“You can’t hide away forever,” Bert said at last. “Believe me.”

Crowley couldn’t hold back a hollow, bitter laugh. What could Bert even begin to understand of eternity? 

“I know it hurts,” Bert said, “But there’s more to life than just that.”

Crowley scoffed and turned away from the sink, setting the glass down a little harder than necessary on the counter. “How would you know?” he growled, sweeping past the barman.

Crowley dropped down onto the sofa, determined to ignore Bert until he left.

For a minute the barman was so silent he thought Bert had actually gone, but then he spoke, voice sad but unwavering. “I lost my wife twenty-nine years ago.”

Crowley felt his own grief pause for a moment, absorbing something he had never learned about the barman, not in eighteen years.

“She died from complications during her pregnancy,” Bert said, moving around to drop down next to Crowley on the sofa. He was staring at his hands. “They couldn’t save the baby. And of course everyone here in Midfarthing—I’ve lived here my whole life, you know. Everyone knew. It was the worst four years of my life.”

Crowley turned his eyes on the barman, who was sitting next to him with bowed shoulders. “I didn’t think I’d ever be myself again; never thought I could. I felt like the world itself was going to crush me, that the weight of it would just end me; or at least I hoped that, so then I wouldn’t have to be without her anymore.

“But this village was there for me—Midfarthing, and all of my friends and family, and they didn’t make it better, but they made it bearable. And when I knew I had to do _something_ or else I would just lose myself completely, I started working at the pub.” Bert smiled wanly, twisting his fingers together. “Seemed like a job someone like me ought to have. Long hours, and no one to keep up waiting in the evenings.” Bert sat back. “And maybe I could help some people. Or that’s what I told myself, anyway.”

Crowley’s eyes followed the barman.

“It never stops hurting,” Bert said after a long moment, “but it does hurt an awful lot less. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of her, and of the daughter I never got to meet…but that’s a part of who I am now, and I can’t change that, and, honestly, I don’t want to. In some way, even if it sounds like something straight out of a self-help book, I feel like they’re still with me.” Bert shook his head, and a soft smile stole over his face. “And no one can ever take that away.”

Crowley, inexplicably, felt tears welling up that were, for the first time in weeks, not for his own loss. “I’m sorry,” Crowley said, and meant it. 

Bert smiled again and seemed to shake himself a little. “It took me four years to really get back to myself, to be happy again and not feel bad for feeling that way. I don’t want it to take that long for you. If there’s a chance I can help, if I can somehow bring some sort of good out of all of the bad that’s happened to me—I want to help.”

Crowley felt his jaw tighten as he swallowed down more tears. He blinked and looked down at the floor. “Okay,” he said, forcing his eyes shut. 

Beside him, he felt the weight on the other side of the sofa lift as Bert stood. A moment later the barman’s hand rested on his shoulder lightly, squeezing it comfortingly. “It _will_ get better. And we’re all here for you. The whole village. You may not have grown up here like most of us, but that doesn’t make you a second-class citizen, and I hope you know that.”

A moment later Bert was gone, the door clicking shut softly behind him. 

Crowley turned to look at the empty stretch of sofa beside him, considering listing over and just falling asleep again, or crying until he could. To just wrap himself in self-pity and let the shattered pieces of his life fall around him, let the loss swallow him whole.

But then he stood up, fished the empty bottle off the floor, and went and put it in the sink. He drank some more water and stood there leaning against the counter for a long moment, just breathing and trying not to think about how he would never spend another morning with Aziraphale again.

He opened the fridge and pulled out one of the mystery containers, peeling away the foil wrapped over the top to reveal something that looked like lasagna. He was unable to locate a clean fork and looked forlornly at the handful of dirty cutlery stacked up next to the sink. He really did not want to wash the dishes; that was a step too far. 

He looked back down at the pan of lasagna, and for a moment felt like giving up entirely, and going back to the sofa to curl up, trying to banish reality from his world.

Then he remembered that he was a demon—or, rather, an angel now. Crowley picked up one of the unwashed forks and held it in his hand for a moment. There was no reason to stop himself from using his powers anymore, or performing miracles. No human Aziraphale to make feel at home.

There was just him, and that was how it was always going to be.

In the end, Crowley willed the fork clean and, after microwaving himself a piece of the lasagna, only made it halfway through before his throat closed and he couldn’t compel himself to eat any more. Then he went over to the sofa and curled up on it anyway, though perhaps the hole eating away at his soul didn’t swallow him quite as quickly.

The seasons turned yet again, the stiflingly hot summer finally cooling off as the leaves coloured and spread their fiery mantle. 

Crowley tried to keep himself together. He spent fewer nights curled up drinking until he blacked out, and instead tried reading to distract himself. The problem was, he knew all of the angel’s books back to front, having read them aloud to Aziraphale countless times, near the end. He could rarely get through even the first chapter of one without being swamped by memories. 

So one chilly autumn day Crowley walked into the village, shivering against the cold and refusing to warm himself magically or put on a coat, and stopped at the cafe. 

He bought himself a plate of fish and chips he was destined to eat only half of, and spent the whole mealtime just staring at the empty seat across the table from him and wishing it wasn't so empty.

When he was done, he went up to the small stretch of bar and asked Harper if he could have a word.

The cafe owner flashed him a thumbs up, finished flipping some hamburgers on the grill, and walked over to him.

“What can I do for you?” Harper asked easily. His tone softened, just a little. “You doing all right?”

Crowley felt his throat tighten as it did whenever someone mentioned, or tactfully did not mention, Aziraphale. The unFallen angel swallowed it down. “Fine,” he said. “Though, actually, I was wondering…” Crowley looked down for a moment. “All of Aziraphale’s books are just sitting back at our place, and he—he really loved those books, you know, and I can’t really do them justice. Some of them are quite old, and they really need a good home, and should be looked after by someone who…loves them as much as he did.”

Crowley looked up to see Harper gazing at him with poorly masked excitement, as though the former demon had offered him the world on a plate.

“So, I was wondering…would you like them?” Crowley finished, feeling fairly certain of the answer. He had been neither blind nor deaf when Harper and Aziraphale had gasped in unison over the immaculate binding of a seventeenth century edition of _Paradise Lost_. It was clear that the same bibliophilic instinct that had dogged Aziraphale for centuries was just as strong in Harper, and the angel had all but stamped him with his seal of approval. 

“I—I would love a look through, but I couldn’t possibly afford all of them,” Harper managed at last.

“You wouldn’t need to pay me,” Crowley said, waving away the cafe owner’s words. “They should stay together, and they really need someone to look after them who knows what they’re doing. Besides, it’s what Aziraphale…would have wanted.” Crowley’s mind flashed back to the angel repeatedly ushering potential customers out of his bookshop with the aid of glares, unpleasant smells, and anything else he could conjure up on a moment’s thought.

Harper was gaping at Crowley in open disbelief, and when one of his employees tried to tap him on the shoulder, he waved them away wordlessly.

“But those books— _all_ of them?” he asked incredulously. “But you’d be—the incunable alone is worth—worth— _millions.”_

Though it was a sizable sum, Crowley only shrugged. Money had never been any obstacle for him.

“You can’t be serious,” Harper said next, looking as though he scarcely believed the words coming out of Crowley’s mouth, expecting them to be too good to be true.

“Serious as…something very serious,” Crowley said, rather pathetically. “Stone, maybe?”

“Really?” Harper asked again, looking for positive verification.

Crowley felt himself smiling a little—he’d rarely been the bearer of such good news. “Really.”

“I—well,” Harper stammered. “Of course! I’d love them—wow—I’ll have to tell Mara—what’ll my mates from Uni think?—just, wow. _Thank you.”_

“Don’t mention it,” Crowley said, feeling a little buoyed by Harper’s excitement. “You can drop by whenever to pick them up. If you have any boxes, it would be good to bring them.”

Harper was looking at Crowley like he could see his wings and divine aura.

Then the cafe owner held up a finger. “One moment, please,” he stammered and bustled off into the back room.

Crowley smirked a little and then let out a small laugh as Harper returned a moment later with a large, elaborately frosted cream cake, which he dropped down in front of the former demon. 

“Free of charge,” Harper said. “And anything you ever want from here ever again. I’ll bake you a dozen cakes, tarts, scones, anything you like—and I'll make you a dozen every day until eternity ends if you like.”

Crowley couldn’t resist a smile at that one. “Eternity ends, eh?” he said. “I just might take you up on that.” He cast the cream cake a fond look; Aziraphale had loved them so very much. "I do quite like cake."

“Just give me an hour’s notice,” Harper said with a grin. “Eternity’s great, but ovens still take a while to do their thing.”

“Deal.”

 

~~***~~

 

Harper arrived the very next morning with his car, his wife, and a pile of boxes. Crowley helped the two of them pack the angel’s books, having taken care to hide the books written by angels and demons away upstairs; they exuded power that could be dangerous to mortals at best, and catastrophic at worst. It would be best for him to crate those very carefully and post them back to Aziraphale’s old bookshop for safekeeping. 

Harper reverently wrapped the oldest, most fragile books in some cloth he had brought before fitting them snugly into boxes for the short trip across the village. Crowley had seen the same stars in Aziraphale’s eyes enough times to know that the moment Harper got home he was going to meticulously unpack them one by one and examine them with trembling fingers while Mara rolled her eyes and asked him when he wanted to come and help make dinner.

Once Harper was gone, the bookcases crowded around the fireplace stared at Crowley with their empty shelves, but at least emptiness was something he was familiar with. It was the memories he tried to hide from.

Autumn turned cold and hardened into winter, and though the weather was still very mild, it was cold enough to kill the last of the lilies planted carefully outside the little cottage. 

Crowley did not plan on planting any more flowers.

Instead, he went through his drawers, pulling out the handful of shirts he had bothered to buy so he’d have something to throw into the wash with Aziraphale’s clothes. Now that the angel wasn’t going to be doing any more laundry, Crowley supposed dully that he could save time and just miracle his one outfit clean every morning like he had for millennia. 

In the back of his sock drawer, Crowley was momentarily baffled when he pulled out something long and tartan.

The former demon ran his thumbs over the stitched wool in confusion, and then suddenly recognised it as the scarf Aziraphale had knitted for him in those months the angel had inexplicably taken up the hobby. It was the scarf Crowley had sworn up and down he would never wear.

Looking at it now, all Crowley could think was that he must have objected on sheer principle, because it was a beautiful scarf. The stitches started out a little uneven, but then they pulled together into a smooth, ordered pattern.

Crowley rubbed his thumb over the soft material, thinking of the time that had been put into making this, the time _Aziraphale_ had put into it, knitting it expressly for Crowley.

And Crowley had dismissed it out of hand.

The unFallen angel realised his grip had tightened on the scarf and he forced his fingers to relax. Then, without hesitating, he reached up and wound its tartan length tightly around his neck, right where it belonged.


	28. A Sabbatical

Crowley tried to take Bert’s advice. He really did.

He spent more time in the village, talking or eating or walking the perimeter like he always had, trying to tell himself that Aziraphale was gone but it was not the end of the world, not the end of _his_ world.

It worked, for a little while.

The gaping hole in his chest lost its sharp edge, and flattened out into a sort of ever-present, dull ache that reminded him that he was not whole. He didn’t know when he’d started needing Aziraphale to feel that way, but all he knew was that he was now incomplete. He’d entwined his life with Aziraphale’s so thoroughly without his ever quite noticing, that there was precious little left of himself now that was his alone. And what little bits existed were now being fragmented as the rest of his soul shattered into painful splinters.

November passed in a flurry of hail and blustery, iron-grey afternoons, and Crowley couldn’t escape the memories.

Aziraphale’s scarf remained securely wrapped around his neck, keeping him warm and snug. He could feel his pulse beating against its soft folds sometimes, reminding him of his continued solitary existence. He always kept the journal the angel had left for him close at hand, well-thumbed already and full of truths Crowley knew his own attitude would have prevented Aziraphale from telling him while he was alive. 

Every time he neared the cooker or pulled out a certain type of tin or bowl, Crowley would remember the recipes he and Aziraphale had made together, the angel meticulously measuring out flour and sugar while Crowley threw everything else together in a decidedly slapdash manner.

In front of the cottage lay the empty, ice-dusted plots of earth where the remaining stems of the lilies clustered together, dead at last.

The memories stalked Crowley, following him around the cottage, into the village, and even to his sleep. The nightmares were back, but they were sporadic, and there was little they could show him now that was worse than the truth. History, in this case, was worse than fiction.

The villagers tried to help, but their encouraging smiles and subtle offers of assistance just served to remind Crowley that he was broken and lost without his angel. He was a thing to be pitied, a once balanced equation that had lost everything to the right of the equals sign, leaving the former demon unsteady as he slid into that vast negative space pressing in around him.

Christmas arrived, and the usual cheer that accompanied the festivities came as it always had. As everyone else geared up into the spirit of things, Crowley felt his grip on reality slipping.

He was at a Christmas party in New York City in 1928, encouraging the wealthy to invest even further, while Aziraphale drank too much champagne and went on about how the economy had never been more stable; he was sitting next to the angel on someone’s doorstep in Paris in 1789, too exhausted to drink but too traumatised to do anything but; he and Aziraphale were singing a little too loudly in a tavern in Cairo in the twelfth century, their off-key renditions convincing the heavyset Egyptian man in front of them that they belonged on the street instead; Aziraphale was shaking him awake and telling him that the lane outside was crawling with angels saying God’s son had come to Earth, and he’d better turn himself into a snake sharpish so that the angel could smuggle him out of the area before Michael or Gabriel caught a glimpse of Crowley’s demonic aura, which Aziraphale was currently doing his best to hide from sight like so much dirty washing.

When the twenty-fifth rolled around, all Crowley wanted to do was drown his sorrows like he had every Christmas for the last two thousand years. The problem was, he couldn’t bring himself to break the two-millennia-long tradition of sharing the salutary bottle with the angel who had prevented his first Christmas from being his last.

Early that evening, while Crowley was still half-curled up on the sofa, a blanket pulled around him like a cloak and Aziraphale’s scarf wrapped around his neck, a knock came at the door.

For one confused, hopeful moment, Crowley thought it was Aziraphale, here after all. But then he opened the door and it was only Bert, looking somber but bearing what looked encouragingly like a bottle of wine.

“Hi,” Crowley said, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice.

“I was wondering if you’d be here,” Bert greeted him. “I hadn’t seen you around lately. The family decided to do Christmas all the way up in York this year, and frankly that’s a bit far for me…so I was wondering if you’d mind if I joined you here? I brought a gift.” Bert wiggled the wine bottle meaningfully, looking at him hopefully.

Crowley studied him for a moment. It seemed fairly obvious that Bert wasn’t here because he was lonely, but rather because he knew that Crowley was, but that seemed largely irrelevant. The man did have alcohol.

“Come on in,” Crowley said, stepping aside and motioning him inside. “How’s the nephew?”

They made small talk for a while, though Crowley only managed to keep it up for a few minutes. His mind kept wandering to Aziraphale, and the inclination that had cropped up recently in the back of his mind to find whatever the angelic equivalent of holy water was and douse himself in it.

At last Bert acquiesced to open the wine, which Crowley noted with approval was an excellent 1920 vintage Chateau Gironville. The barman, unsurprisingly, knew his stuff.

“Been saving this for a while,” Bert said as he popped the cork. “Special occasion that’s never going to happen, you know?”

Crowley nodded without having really listened and went to fetch two wineglasses. His fingers hovered over the matching glasses for a long moment; they only had the two, one for him and one for Aziraphale.

The unFallen angel considered conjuring up another one, or perhaps a pair, but instead just forced down the tightness in his throat and brought the original set over to Bert, who began pouring out the wine.

Crowley, struggling to convince himself that drinking with someone else on Christmas wasn’t some sort of a betrayal of Aziraphale’s trust, was grateful when the barman took a seat at the table instead of on the sofa like the angel always had.

For a while they just drank, Bert occasionally saying something about the weather or the pub or this new car he was thinking about buying, while Crowley just stared into his glass and remembered all the times Aziraphale had rambled on to him like this and he hadn’t bothered to listen.

Bert seemed a little perplexed when he managed to pour a fifth glass from the bottle and it still wasn’t half empty, but he must have chalked his confusion up to the alcohol, because he kept going and didn’t protest when Crowley poured himself another very tall glass.

“Considering I w—work with the s—stuff,” Bert hiccuped around his sixth glass, “I really d—don’t drink a lot of i—it.”

It was nearing ten thirty when Crowley broke down and started sobbing uncontrollably, and had to be comforted by the very bemused barman. 

Fifteen minutes later, Bert joined in as well, crying stiffly as he confessed to Crowley that he had intended to drink this wine on his and his wife’s tenth wedding anniversary.

At eleven, Crowley explained angels and demons to Bert, and how he had started as one, lived almost his entire life as the other, and then gone back to the first. If the barman noticed Crowley pulling anxiously at his tartan scarf, tangling his fingers desperately in its soft folds, he didn’t comment.

At around eleven thirty, Bert asked how Lucifer felt about global warming, to which Crowley responded honestly that he had no bleeding idea, and just why did everyone expect him to be best buds with the King of Darkness, anyway?

Ten minutes later, Crowley postulated that it might be because he had helped raise a child who he’d thought was Lucifer’s son, and now that he was thinking about it he was pretty sure that Hell had awarded him some sort of commendation for this global warming thing; he got some weird post nowadays. Or maybe that had been a bill from the electric company. He wasn’t sure.

It was nearing midnight when Crowley started calling Bert 'Aziraphale,' and shortly thereafter the barman tottered to his feet and made it as far as the sofa before stretching out on its length and falling asleep. Crowley drained the bottle and, after several tries, managed to convince it to stop refilling itself. Then he leaned back against the edge of the sofa, having, at some unremembered point, ended up on the floor, and managed to find that warm darkness as well.

 

 

~~***~~ 

 

The morning was rough.

Bert had a decent-sized hangover, and though Crowley miracled the worst of his own away, he couldn’t go too far without risking arousing the barman’s suspicions.

Most of the previous night was a blissful drunken haze for Crowley, which was a relief, and Bert seemed to have blocked most of it out as well, which was also probably for the best.

As Bert used the loo and made groaning noises into the sink, Crowley sat on the edge of the sofa, massaging his temples and wincing at every noise. His mind was a blur of Aziraphale, as it always was these days, the angel haunting him even now.

There was the sound of a door opening and Bert walked into the living room a moment later, looking a little pale but still in one piece.

“I can’t stay here,” Crowley announced, switching his gaze back to the fireplace.

Bert didn’t say anything but came to a stop next to the sofa, hovering at the edge of Crowley’s vision.

“It’s too much—there are too many memories,” Crowley said, eyes trailing over the hearth, where first a blackbird had burned its wings and then his own feather had rested. He remembered the way Aziraphale had lunged for it like it was worth more to him than his own memories, sitting in the nearby ashes of his journals. “If I—I see him everywhere. I can’t—I just—”

“I understand,” Bert said, cutting him off gently. “Change of scenery, that sort of thing.”

“Yes,” Crowley agreed emphatically. He reached up a hand to run his fingers distractedly through his hair. “I—that’s what I need.”

“So go,” Bert said, moving around the sofa to sit down carefully next to Crowley. “If that’s what you need. You’re from London, right? So go to Wales, or Cornwall, or Scotland. Hell, even go to France if you can stand those people. Or Germany, or India, or Russia—try America; whatever you can afford. Take a trip. A sabbatical. It’s not a bad thing.”

Crowley perked up a little. “A sabbatical,” he said, tasting the word on his tongue. It sounded like something an angel would do.

“See if it helps,” Bert suggested. “Time isn’t the only type of distance you can put between things.”

Crowley nodded. 

“Look,” Bert said, and he appeared very much like he wanted to put a hand on the former demon’s shoulder but restrained himself. “If you think it would help, I say go for it. What’s the worst that could happen?”

_I could get accosted by Heaven or Hell and killed_ , Crowley thought to himself, and then reflected that that really wasn’t all that bad, comparatively.

“Just remember that you don’t have to stay gone,” Bert said. “You’ve got friends here, and you’re always welcome back, if your trip to New Zealand or wherever goes south.”

Crowley nodded again. Then he added, “Thanks.”

“Hey, barman here,” Bert said, standing up and gesturing loosely to himself. “Dispensing life advice is practically in the job description.”

“Good thing it is, too,” Crowley said as he stood up. He extended a hand and Bert shook it. Maybe the barman would never be his friend in the sense that Aziraphale had been his friend, Crowley thought, but he was certainly a _type_ of friend, and that was a nice thought.

“I’ll see you around, then,” Bert said, giving him a smile followed by a grimace. “Good Lord, I hate hangovers. Send me a postcard from Barcelona.”

Crowley grinned and followed Bert to the door, where the barman collected his coat and shrugged into it. “Thanks for the wine.”

“Thanks for the company,” Bert shot back. “And happy Boxing Day!”

“You, too,” Crowley said, and then Bert gave him a mock salute and headed out into the chilly morning air, pulling his coat more tightly around himself.

Crowley went back inside, wiped away his hangover, and miracled his rumpled clothes clean and well-ironed. In his mind, he started ticking off places he and Aziraphale had visited together. He needed somewhere they’d never been, somewhere fresh and new that would keep his mind off the angel. He was convinced that the ache in his chest would kill him otherwise.

 

~~***~~

 

There weren’t many places.

He started in Botswana, the south-African nation of craggy trees, broad stretches of grassy plateaus, and ragged boulder-strewn hillsides.

Crowley walked to the edge of a diamond mine and stared across the massive pit, a man-made crater the size of an asteroid impact site. He had never seen anything like it. The warm wind blustered past him, pelting sand against his face around his sunglasses. In his mind's eye, Aziraphale insisted on examining the miners' working conditions.

Crowley passed through a small city, the buildings spaced widely but of surprisingly modern design. He found a hotel ringed by well-trimmed trees, and booked himself a room. As he sank into a warm bath, letting the soapy water dig the gritty sand out of his skin, his thoughts trailed back to having to help Aziraphale bathe himself when the disease’s grip had tightened.

The former demon strode through a rugged valley ringed with massive rocky outcroppings, and watched a handful of zebra run through the long grass. He let the warm wind tousle its way through his hair, and thought about how beautiful it was here, and how much Aziraphale would have enjoyed it. 

Crowley took the next flight across the Atlantic. 

He rode a bus to Paraguay, hiked up to the peak of a mountain whose name he didn’t know how to pronounce, and enjoyed the hospitality of a couple who lived halfway up the slope. He left them with a handful of rare gold coins for their trouble, and felt Aziraphale giving him an approving nod.

Crowley walked along the edge of a lake covered completely in massive lily pads. In his head, he heard the angel commenting excitedly on every other thing, and saw himself rolling his eyes in response and hiding a grin.

He sat on an outcropping of rock and watched the sun set over a massive waterfall, the light fracturing and sending rainbows scattering across the jungle. He felt the angel’s head resting on his shoulder, felt the shadow of Aziraphale’s wings draped around him.

Crowley had never felt more alone.

He took a commercial flight north to America, rented a car, and drove through a series of increasingly small towns in Michigan.

He repeatedly found himself making turns onto the wrong side of the road, and having the steering wheel on the left side was a constant annoyance. Aziraphale clung to the car door and made an anxious comment about Crowley discorporating them both. Crowley actually laughed aloud before he glanced over and realised that Aziraphale had only been there in his imagination.

The unFallen angel took a cruise ship across several of the Great Lakes and browsed the onboard gift shop with interest. There was a little ship in a bottle he knew the angel would have loved. There was also an all-you-could-eat buffet with little chocolate and raspberry cream cakes; Crowley had taken three before he remembered that he had no one to share them with.

He found a used bookshop in a small town on the Upper Peninsula and walked among the shelves for over an hour even though he knew that it was Aziraphale who had always bought the books.

Crowley purchased a ticket to Laos, and as he boarded the plane Aziraphale asked him what he was running from.

Crowley visited an elaborate Buddhist temple and stood in the corner for a while, watching the tourists pass by and wondering if there were angels in Buddhism. He had never really studied the Eastern religions—or were they philosophies? Beside him, Aziraphale whispered that he had read several interesting books on the subject, and the former demon was welcome to borrow them if he wanted. Crowley bought a postcard and posted it to Bert.

The unFallen angel walked through an area known locally as the Plain of Jars, which was filled with large stone pots whose very existence mystified experts. He was warned by a local guide to not stray off the beaten path, because there were still unexploded mines scattered across the field from the Vietnam War. Aziraphale tugged at Crowley's sleeve and wanted to go exploring, and maybe disarm some mines while they were at it.

Crowley took a boat to Micronesia and got off on the island of Weno. Civilisation had stretched this far as well, and the unFallen angel was able to get a fish sandwich at a local cafe. Aziraphale asked him mildly why he didn’t try something more interesting.

Crowley toured an old stone lighthouse, and Aziraphale commented that it took him back to his days in Alexandria. The angel had really loved that library.

Crowley snuck into a multi-story church that had been painted a bright salmon colour and climbed up to the roof. He sat there and watched the stars come out, one by one. The Milky Way was spread magnificently above him, shining more brightly than he had seen it in centuries. After a long, quiet, moment, he felt Aziraphale’s hand on his shoulder as the angel told him that this had been nice, but when were they going home?

Home.

As the galaxy turned on its axle above him, Crowley sat back and admitted to himself that there was nowhere he could go that Aziraphale wouldn’t follow. The things that kept reminding him of his angel, he reflected, weren’t etched in the waterfalls or street cars or brightly-dyed clothing; they were coming from himself. He couldn’t shake off the angel because he carried Aziraphale with him. 

Crowley’s hand went to the tartan scarf wound around his neck, feeling the soft material that had travelled the world with him.

In some ways, it was a mercy. He didn’t want to forget Aziraphale; not really. He just wanted to stop the pain.

But the pain, he knew now, _was_ Aziraphale. It hurt because the angel was dead and Crowley had cared for him enough for that to mean something. Maybe if it hadn’t hurt…maybe that would have been worse.

Crowley stretched out on the roof of the church, resting the back of his head on the hard concrete and listening to the faint sounds of wildlife, sea, and traffic. 

Aziraphale was gone, but maybe Crowley would never be truly alone. Maybe remembering the angel was a blessing, not a curse.

Crowley curled his fingers around the soft material of the scarf and told himself that he was going to be all right.

He told himself that over and over again all night, and when the first milky fingers of dawn blotted the faintest stars from view, he half-believed it.


	29. The Ineffable Plan

It was raining in Midfarthing. 

The little cottage was just as Crowley had left it, orderly enough, though the lawn needed mowing and the flowerbeds were a mess of weeds and grass.

He had been gone almost six months.

Crowley went to the pub that evening and Bert looked happy to see him, asking how his trip had been as he poured the former demon a glass of lager.

Crowley recounted his tales of looking at the zebras and the waterfall and the little ships in bottles, and Bert nodded with interest as Crowley told him about the unexplained stone jars and the salmon-coloured church. Bert swapped news with him, telling him how Harper’s wife Mara was now five months pregnant, and Walter Jamieson had been convicted of fraud, heavily fined, and sentenced to three years in prison.

He also recounted how Donnie had gone to give testimony during the banker’s trial, explaining how Crowley had revealed Jamieson’s secrets to her before allegedly fleeing the country, which the unFallen angel laughed at. Apparently Bert had got Crowley's good name cleared by insisting that the former demon had merely _discovered_ Jamieson’s nefarious schemes and exposed them. Jamieson’s claims that Crowley had really been the mastermind behind it all fell on deaf ears. After all, Crowley had been careful to transfer all the illegal funds into Jamieson’s accounts, and not his own. He was a philanthropist like that. 

Bert got a little strange after that, and Crowley could have sworn the barman _blushed_ as he explained that he and Donnie had become rather close during the trial and _surprise surprise_ , it turned out they had lots in common, and wasn’t it all thanks to Crowley having discovered Jamieson’s corrupt finances…

Crowley grinned as the barman admitted that he had decided it was time to finally move on from his past—he still had some mileage left in him, after all, he wasn’t about to keel over just yet—and the wedding was booked for July.

When Crowley finally quit the pub, feeling like maybe he wasn’t quite as alone as he felt, the rain was beginning to come down a little harder.

He slept soundly for the first time in months.

In the morning, he was paging through the sizable pile of post on the kitchen table when there was a polite knock at the door.

Crowley walked over unhurriedly and answered it, blinking when he saw who it was.

Adam Young had entered middle age, and though his curling blond hair had started to grey at the temples, age had done him no disservices, his face just as handsome and clear as it had always been, eyes piercing and even. His aura spread around him like a cloak, tingling over the unFallen angel’s skin. Crowley was surprised he hadn’t felt it earlier; the Antichrist’s aura radiated for miles. 

Adam’s presence sparked something else in Crowley, as well: a surge of bitter memories of the Antichrist denying Crowley’s desperate pleas, not once but twice, to save Aziraphale’s life. The man standing on his doorstep had all but signed Aziraphale’s death warrant himself. 

Crowley felt his jaw lock and forced himself to swallow. That was over now. There was nothing that could be done about it. He just couldn’t believe that Adam had the nerve to show up now, after what he had failed to do for Aziraphale, and what that had done to Crowley _._

“Hello,” Adam said with a friendly smile. “I was passing through on my way to a seminar in Cardiff, and thought I’d stop by. How are things going?”

Crowley wanted to be angry. He really did. But he just couldn’t find it in himself; he was tired of being angry, tired of everything. Tired of the caring that had got him into this situation in the first place.

“What do you want?” Crowley asked bluntly, ignoring Adam’s question.

Adam’s smile faltered. “Just thought I’d just pop in for a quick chat. Is there a problem?”

_Yes_ , Crowley wanted to say, _you killed my best friend and eventually even all of the people I know here will grow old and die and then I shall be utterly alone for the rest of my miserable eternity._ Instead he said, “No.”

“Well, then,” Adam said, brightening up. When Crowley made no move to invite the Antichrist in, Adam shifted uncomfortably on the threshold. “Do you want to—er—maybe go for a walk?”

“Fine,” Crowley said, pausing only long enough to tug the tartan scarf Aziraphale had knitted for him from its hook near the door, wrapping it around his neck in its familiar place.

Adam moved away from the door and Crowley stepped out into the warm summer air. The scarf was entirely unnecessary, but the unFallen angel refused to go anywhere without it nowadays.

Crowley took the lead, walking in the direction of his usual circuit of the village.

“You look a little...down,” Adam said uncertainly as he fell into step beside Crowley.

The former demon bit back a bitter laugh. “Huh, yeah. I wonder why.”

Adam frowned and turned to look over at him. “How’s Aziraphale?” he asked, as though it were the most natural question in the world.

Crowley felt his throat tighten, a flare of that dying anger sparking within him. “Dead,” he said flatly. “Not that you care. Didn’t care then; doubt you’d care now.”

Adam cocked his head at Crowley, looking rather bemused. “I cared very much then, and I care very much now. I sensed his passing, and your return to divinity.”

Crowley scoffed. “Then why are you asking how he is?” he asked. “Just rubbing it in?”

Adam was quiet for a moment. “How are things as an angel?” he asked instead.

“Just as rubbish as they were as a demon,” Crowley said flatly, turning off the main road onto the little trail he’d found that bordered a field. “But I’m no angel.”

“Your wings say otherwise,” Adam pointed out, and Crowley was rather unsurprised to find that they were visible to the Antichrist while remaining invisible to everyone else, himself included.

“Well, that’s not my fault,” Crowley snapped, ducking under an overhanging branch.

Adam looked a little puzzled. “I don’t know whose else it would be,” he said. “They’re looking a little…unwell, though.”

“Yeah, I suppose they are,” Crowley said, a bit bitterly. He still hadn’t felt up to moulting to regrow the new feathers, and he didn’t care to do it alone.

The unFallen angel was so wrapped up in the horrifying thought of moulting by himself, and all the things that could go wrong if it wasn’t handled properly, that he didn’t immediately register Adam’s hand on his shoulder.

Crowley rocked to a halt as he felt a surge of power, alien and raw in its sheer intensity, jump through him from his shoulder to his hidden wings. Crowley winced and his mouth opened in a gasp of pain as he felt his feathers stand on end. Sharp pinfeathers broke through the skin where his missing primaries, secondaries, and coverlets had been, and lengthened to their correct dimensions. Crowley felt his wings suddenly weigh a little heavier as the long, sturdy feathers unfurled and lay sleekly beside their companions. 

The entire sensation only lasted for a couple of seconds, and when Adam removed his hand and the surge of power faded, Crowley felt his wings, perfectly balanced and fully fledged.

“I think you’ll be needing those,” Adam said calmly, as though he hadn’t just saved Crowley a month’s worth of severe discomfort and pain.

Crowley blinked a few times as he straightened up, flexing his ethereal wings.

Adam gave him a small smile and continued walking. Crowley jerked into motion after him.

“Er, thanks,” the former demon said, a little hesitantly. 

“Don’t mention it,” Adam said. 

For a moment they just walked in silence, Crowley staring uncertainly at the ground as Adam looked out over the field.

“Why did I unFall?” Crowley asked after a long moment. He still didn’t understand it himself, and Adam might be the only one short of Him who knew how these things worked. This might be his only opportunity to understand. “Why did Zira have to die?”

Adam blinked and looked over at him. “You didn’t unFall because Aziraphale died,” he said, and his voice was sure.

Crowley glanced over at him. “But that’s when I unFell,” he said. “It was at the same time.”

Adam’s mouth twisted in thought. “Crowley, when was the last time you looked at your wings?” he asked. “Before your return to divinity, I mean?”

Crowley thought. He hadn’t wanted to force Aziraphale to remember his own burned wings by seeing Crowley’s, so the demon had kept them hidden from sight for quite some time, neglecting even to preen them as he usually did. “Er, probably pretty soon after we got to Midfarthing,” Crowley admitted. “After I’d finished healing them.”

Adam nodded.

“Why?”

The Antichrist took a moment to survey the field on their right. “Do you remember when you and Aziraphale had a row, and Aziraphale told you about how he felt being human, and you stormed out?”

Crowley felt a familiar wave of shame at the memory, accompanied by a prickle of annoyance that Adam had been apparently continued using his powers to spy instead of help. “Yeah.”

“When you left, Aziraphale thought you were gone forever, and that you wouldn’t be coming back. Do you know why?”

Crowley shrugged and kicked at a rock in his path. “Because I was being stupid about it?” he suggested.

“Because you were a demon,” Adam corrected. “And there was no reason for a demon to go back, no advantage to be gained by staying with a Fallen, mortal angel.”

Crowley shrugged again, feeling guiltier than ever. “So?”

_“So,_ there was _no reason_ for a _demon_ to go back,” Adam repeated meaningfully. “But you went back anyway.”

Crowley looked at Adam sharply, finally understanding what the Antichrist was getting at. “Wait, are you saying—”

“The moment you knocked on that door,” Adam said, “the first of your feathers turned white.”

Crowley stared at Adam in shock, and could barely manage to keep his feet moving.

“You didn’t unFall because Aziraphale died,” Adam explained. “You unFell because you _changed_. You made decisions, and those decisions brought you closer to divinity. It was a change of heart over many years, and one that just happened to conclude with the love you felt for your friend as he passed on.” Adam smiled. “One might say you sauntered vaguely upwards.”

This time Crowley really did stop walking, incapable of keeping his feet moving, unable to believe his own ears. They were standing fairly near to the little pond, where a man with a clerical collar was fishing off the end of the pier, but Crowley’s eyes were locked on Adam.

“And Aziraphale—I think you’re mistaken about why he Fell, too,” the Antichrist continued. “He didn’t Fall because he saved you; saving innocents and looking out for friends has never been a sin.” Adam looked over at the little pond, golden curls sweeping across his cheekbones. “Aziraphale Fell because he killed his brothers and made clear he wanted no allegiance with Heaven after what they had done to you. He did the wrong thing for all the right reasons—a very human thing to do.”

Crowley was still in shock, working through Adam’s words, but there was something else he wasn’t sure about. “But—what about Agnes’ prophecy?” he protested weakly. “She said unFalling required an act of true remorse—but that never happened.”

Adam gave Crowley a wry smile. “Did you really expect to find the answer to the nature of souls in an old book?”

Crowley felt himself grow defensive. “She hasn’t been wrong yet.”

“Agnes saw the future, yes, and also parts of the past,” Adam said, raising a hand placatingly, “but that doesn’t mean she understood what she saw. She saw your Fall, originally, and the ‘radiant splendour’ wasn’t Aziraphale’s wings burning, like you thought, but the sunset as half the Host Fell. And ‘an act of true remorse’; what else does remorse look like to a Renaissance woman than tears, especially from a demon?”

Crowley turned that over in his mind. “But it said ‘a mortal soul’ had Fallen,” he said after a moment. “And I didn’t turn mortal when I Fell; Aziraphale did.”

Adam shook his head. “You’re confusing souls with lives,” he said. “Angels and demons have immortal lives, but mortal souls. That’s why you can live for millennia but as a demon holy water could have killed you completely, with nothing after death.”

“So?” Crowley asked. He knew that.

“Humans have it the other way around. Mortal lives but immortal souls. Life after death.”

Crowley blinked at Adam; he didn’t understand.

Adam sighed patiently. “Your soul, Crowley. What do you think it means to be an angel, or to be a human? Falling, unFalling—it’s all just a reflection of the soul as it changes. And Aziraphale’s soul was human, in the end; you never did accept that, did you?”

Something was becoming urgently apparent to Crowley, and he felt a spark of something jump into life deep in his core.

“Just look at your wings, Crowley,” Adam said, and now he was smiling. “You’re an angel. They couldn’t keep you out of Heaven if they tried. And where do you think Aziraphale’s immortal soul went when he died?”

Crowley felt himself abruptly stop breathing, and could only stare at Adam as the Antichrist smiled at him easily, as though he had figured all this out the moment Aziraphale first Fell. Maybe he had.  _The bastard_ _._

“Just because it’s ineffable,” Adam pointed out, “doesn’t mean it wasn’t well thought-out.”

Crowley threw himself into the ethereal plane in an instant, huge white wings spreading on either side of him like banners. And then Crowley, once an angel and then a demon and now an angel once more, was gone in a flash of pure white light.

Adam craned his head up to watch the blinding iridescent streak that was Crowley cross dimensions and ascend with the speed and urgency of a lightning strike, heading to find his angel, who was the only thing worth more to him than the whole world.

 

~~***~~

 

The man fishing on the pier turned and looked over his shoulder at Adam.

“Glad he finally got things sorted out,” Father Gilbert said, with a friendly nod in Adam’s direction.

“Yeah,” Adam said, walking over and onto the pier. The weathered wood creaked under his shoes. “I was worrying about him.”

“You weren’t the only one.” The vicar reeled his line in and prepared to cast it again. “How are the kids?”

“Good, good,” Adam said absently, watching the end of the line whisk out over the water. “They’re a handful, though. Hopefully no Apocalypse-starters among them.”

Father Gilbert gave Adam a meaningful look.

“Oi, I’m keeping an eye on them,” Adam protested, raising his hands defensively. “You’re welcome to babysit if things get out of hand.”

“Hmpf,” the priest said, and turned back to his rod. For a moment he just tugged absently at the pole. “Glad he finally worked out where he belonged, though,” the vicar said after a time, referring to the streak of light still fading in the ethereal plane.

Adam nodded, looking out over the smooth water. “He really was never cut out for Hell,” the Antichrist supposed. “No more than Aziraphale was for Heaven.”

“But not really for Earth, either,” Father Gilbert noted, reeling his line back in. Adam watched him. “Crowley was made for something else entirely, as was Aziraphale.”

“What’s that?” Adam asked.

“Haven’t you figured it out?”

Adam smiled. “I have my theories.”

The Father cast his line back across the water and gave his grandson a kind look. “They were made to be friends to each other.”


	30. Coda

It took Crowley ten agonisingly long minutes to locate Aziraphale’s little slice of Heaven. 

Angels gave him strange looks as he rushed past them, but the colour of his wings convinced them to leave him well enough alone.

When he dodged around someone with four wings he thought might have been Raphael, he heard whispers that this was _Crowley_ , the demon who had unFallen, and who must have been touched and chosen by God Himself for such a thing to occur. Angelic guards and passersby parted like awed mist before him.

Crowley thought absently that he should be admiring the splendour of Heaven, only seen during his brief imprisonment and, millennia before that, in the time before the Fall.

He didn’t give it a second glance, instead pouring all his attention into scanning for the unique aura of the only soul he knew better than his own.

Crowley located Aziraphale at long last and a moment later let his wings fade out of sight as his feet touched down on pavement.

He was still in Heaven, but he was also standing on a street, with a brilliant blue sky stretching overhead and the sound of birds singing. 

Crowley was facing a familiar row of buildings, and he felt a line of chills run down his spine as he turned a hundred and eighty degrees and found himself standing in front of Aziraphale’s Soho bookshop.

It was exactly as he remembered it, though the lights were on inside and it looked a little less dusty than the last time they’d visited.

And sitting right in front of the bookshop, with not a single ‘no parking’ line in sight, sat the Bentley.

Crowley forced his feet forward in stumbling steps, reaching out a hand to run it over the vintage car’s shining black bonnet. It was slightly warm from sitting in the sun, and the unFallen angel’s fingertips trailed over its smooth, glossy surface soundlessly.

Then Crowley turned his face forward and kept walking, until he was just outside the bookshop door. He raised a hand and paused, struck by a sudden last-minute wave of uncertainty.

Then he moved his hand and, for the first time in his very long life, knocked on the bookshop door.

Crowley’s heart was in his throat, hammering loudly as he felt his eyes begin to burn again. His mind was a whirlwind of disbelief and hope and a joy so immense he couldn’t contain it.

He could feel Aziraphale’s aura nearing, as familiar as his own.

And then the door swung open to reveal the only face Crowley ever cared to see again.

For a singular moment they just looked at each other, and the former angel was as he had been before time had taken its toll, and before the disease had visited him. Aziraphale’s ever-present tartan jumper was sitting squarely over a slightly rumpled white dress shirt with the sleeves half rolled up, and the locks of his hair tumbled over each other in a mess of golden curls.

And then Aziraphale grinned more broadly than Crowley had ever seen him, and he seemed to the unFallen angel to be the most beautiful thing in the world. Crowley stepped forward and threw his arms around his angel, who had been lost and now was found.

“Zira,” Crowley whispered, pulling the former angel close and burying his face in Aziraphale’s tartan-patterned shoulder.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale replied, voice breaking as he wrapped his own arms tightly around his friend.

Crowley wanted nothing more than to just lose himself in Aziraphale’s embrace and never let go, but there was a sense of urgency burning at his core. There was something incredibly important he had to say first—something he should have said a long time ago.

“You’re—” Crowley’s voice failed him on his first try and he had to swallow before he could continue, redoubling his grip on Aziraphale and hiding his face in the former angel’s collar, feeling Aziraphale’s soft blond curls brushing against his cheek. “You’re my—my _friend,_ Zira,” the former demon managed at last, feeling his eyes begin to brim with tears at the long-overdue confession.  “You’re my best bloody friend in this whole stupid, sodding, _amazing_ world—” Crowley’s voice broke and he couldn’t continue, feeling tears start streaking down his cheeks as he buried his face back in Aziraphale’s soft, wool-covered shoulder.

Crowley thought he could hear the smile in the former angel’s voice as he pulled him closer and said gently, “I know, my dear. I know.”

For a long time Crowley just stood there, shaking and crying and drinking in Aziraphale’s aura, palpable here in Heaven, and thought how he never wanted to leave, never wanted to let the former angel depart from his embrace.

But then Aziraphale pulled away, and Crowley forced himself to let go as his friend grinned at him from arm’s length, hands still resting on his shoulders. “I must say, you took long enough.”

Crowley laughed, but his hands were still tight around the former angel's arms, and his mind was just one long litany of, _Aziraphale, Aziraphale, oh_ God, _Zira, he’s really here, he’s okay, he’s safe—_

“You’re—you’re alive,” Crowley managed at last, breathless with emotions he had never allowed himself to experience before.

Aziraphale smiled at him, and the fondness in his voice was tangible. “Afraid not, my dear.”

Crowley gave a breathless laugh, feeling more tears running down his cheeks. “You know what I mean, angel.”

Aziraphale smiled and moved one of his hands from Crowley's shoulder so he could wipe away some of the wetness on Crowley’s cheeks with a gentle thumb. “Yeah, I suppose I do,” the former angel said, and then turned and led Crowley into the bookshop, pausing only to close the door behind them.

“I didn’t see it coming, either,” Aziraphale admitted with a lightness of voice that sounded a little forced. “Imagine my surprise. One moment I’m dying in that garden with you, and the next thing I know I’m sitting here in the back room with a cup of tea and a good book.”

Despite the seriousness of the remark, Crowley laughed again, seemingly unable to wipe away the ridiculous smile plastered across his face. Whatever else had happened, right now Aziraphale was very real and very solid and right in front of him, and this seemed to Crowley to be the most unconditionally wonderful thing in the world.

“It took me a while to work out what had happened,” Aziraphale continued in that slightly forced tone as he led Crowley further inside and stopped beside a square table, the former angel’s fingertips ghosting nervously over its smooth surface. “I remember everything, by the way. Everything I lost—it’s all back. Once I worked out where I was, I managed to look up a spell in one of these books so I could keep an eye on you.”

Crowley felt his smile falter as Aziraphale turned to meet his gaze, and the former angel’s eyes were filled with more pain than he could fathom.

“I’m so sorry, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and suddenly his voice was choked with unshed tears. “I didn’t realise—didn’t think…I could only watch—I cried at Christmas—”

Crowley wasn’t sure when he’d closed the space between them, but all of a sudden he was hugging Aziraphale again, and this time Aziraphale was the one crying into his shoulder. 

“Your poor, _beautiful_ feathers—when you ripped them out in that church,” Aziraphale sobbed, voice distraught as his hands bunched in the back of Crowley’s suit jacket, “my heart about broke. And _Botswana_ —and this stupid _scarf,”_ here, Aziraphale’s hand jumped to the length of tartan wool still wrapped around the unFallen angel’s neck, “and at the end, I forgot you, I really did, Crowley, and I tried to find a way to reach you afterwards but I couldn’t and I’m sorry, I’m just so, _so sorry—”_

“It’s okay, angel.” Crowley hugged Aziraphale tighter, imagining the former angel hovering at his side in the graveyard, as he laid his broken and bloodied feathers down on Aziraphale’s grave, or watching him as he sat and drank himself senseless, sobbing and rereading the journal Aziraphale had left for him…

That reminded him. Crowley waited, gently rubbing his friend’s back, until Aziraphale sniffed loudly and pulled away, fingers releasing their stranglehold on the back of his jacket and moving to smooth down Crowley’s collar fussily. Then the former demon smiled and fished in his inside jacket pocket, a moment later producing two folded pieces of paper and a long black feather that he had kept for a long time pressed right against his heart.

Crowley separated the page from Genesis from the feather and held the latter out to Aziraphale. “I don’t know why you liked it so much, just kept reminding you of flying…but here you go.”

Aziraphale took the feather with hesitant fingers, sniffling as he turned it over in his hands. Then he looked up at Crowley through teary eyes. “Oh, my _dear,_ it didn’t remind me of flying,” he said, and set the feather aside on the table, as though it meant nothing to him. Aziraphale gave the former demon a wan smile and put a hand on his shoulder. “It reminded me of you.”

Crowley felt his cheeks colour and was rescued when Aziraphale noticed the second piece of folded paper still in his hands.

Aziraphale joined him in blushing, fingers twitching on the former demon’s shoulder. “I meant what it said, you know,” Aziraphale said, moving his hand to embarrassedly wipe away some of his own tears, giving a little laugh. “Just never got around to saying it in person, I suppose. I’m a bit of a coward that way.”

“No,” Crowley said firmly, because Aziraphale was the bravest person he knew.

Aziraphale smiled sadly but accepted the compliment. “So, I see you’re an angel again,” he changed the subject, leaning over to give the former demon a light congratulatory punch on the shoulder. “I knew you had it in you.”

Crowley couldn’t stop himself from giving a short huff of laughter, and smacked his friend on the arm automatically. “No thanks to you, _angel.”_

Aziraphale blushed again and rubbed his arm. “Hey, I was a little preoccupied,” he protested weakly. “Being human really sucks the life out of a person.”

Crowley made a choking noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and Aziraphale patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. “Too soon?”

The spluttering Crowley leaned forward in defeat until his forehead was resting against his friend’s shoulder. Crowley shook with laughter and disbelief, just taking in the reality of Aziraphale, perfect and unchanged, standing in front of him. He knew then that everything really was going to be all right. “Yeah, angel, too soon.”

“Sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale said apologetically, rubbing his hands up and down the former demon’s back. 

Crowley took a moment to compose himself and then pulled away, wiping at his eyes with his sleeves and chuckling a little despite himself.

Aziraphale gave him an apologetic smile. “Do you want to see the rest of the place?” he asked, motioning with a jerk of his head at something behind him.

“Sure, angel,” Crowley said with one last chuckle. He had no idea what was so interesting in the back of the bookshop he already knew inside and out, but was willing to play along.

Aziraphale shot him an enigmatic grin and turned, leading the way further into the bookshop. He paused by the staircase leading upstairs, but instead of turning to go up them, he opened a nearby door that Crowley was certain hadn’t been there before. The unFallen angel followed Aziraphale curiously as he stepped through it. 

Crowley blinked and looked around in surprise. He was standing in their little cottage in Midfarthing, having entered through a door where there had once been only a window overlooking the back garden.

“I appear to have the best of both worlds,” Aziraphale said with a nervous smile, motioning to the cottage. “Always good weather, too, and the fridge is always stocked. Never any customers in the bookshop, either; that’s nice.”

Crowley nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. His eyes had been drawn automatically to the bookshelves beside the fireplace, where the former angel’s books were lined up as they had been while Aziraphale was alive. Crowley’s eyes, however, had riveted themselves on a very particular row of slim black journals.

Crowley found he had taken a trembling step towards them and Aziraphale followed his gaze. 

When the former angel spoke, his voice was heavy with guilt. “I’m so very sorry about burning them,” he said, shifting on his feet uncomfortably. “I wasn’t thinking straight—nothing made sense and I couldn’t reconcile a mortal life with six millennia of memories. I _had_ intended to leave them for you.” Crowley felt the former angel’s hand light on his shoulder.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Aziraphale said, a bit nervously, “but I rewrote the later ones. The ones with the earlier history. They weren’t very coherent anyway.”

Crowley turned his gaze on Aziraphale, who looked a little embarrassed. “It wasn’t great writing,” the former angel admitted, a little guiltily. “I appear to have added an extra ten volumes or so, but it’s more accurate now. You’re welcome to read them if you like. I think I did a particularly good job with Eden—”

Aziraphale never got to finish as Crowley enveloped him in another hug, crushing the air from his friend’s lungs. “I would love to, angel,” Crowley whispered. 

Aziraphale was smiling when he pulled back, though he looked away when he saw Crowley watching, a slight flush crossing his cheeks. “Would you like some tea, my dear?” he asked, waving a hand hopefully in the direction of the kitchen.

Crowley smiled back. “Of course.”

Aziraphale bustled off gratefully in that direction, Crowley following him.

“Oh, I found Ludwig, by the way,” Aziraphale said as he poured water into the ridiculously outdated kettle he liked so much.

“Ludwig?” Crowley echoed, looking around the kitchen, impressed by how accurate it was to the one on Earth he had just left, down to the mysterious hairline cracks in the side of the refrigerator.

“The Second,” Aziraphale clarified as he set the kettle on the hob and turned up the heat. “Remember, we were placing bets on whether Above or Below got him?”

“King of Bavaria, built a lot of fancy castles,” Crowley remembered. He smiled, thinking back on their conversation fondly. “You said you found him?”

“Right up here,” Aziraphale confirmed. “I win that point. He was right next to Alexander Hamilton, who kept wandering around talking everyone’s ear off about some chap named Lin-Manuel Miranda.”

Crowley bit back a laugh, watching as Aziraphale pulled two tea cups out of the cupboard and placed them on the counter. The former angel looked over at him. “How long are you planning on staying?” he asked carefully, sounding incredibly hopeful but also frighteningly uncertain. “I know Earth’s far more interesting, but at least it’s safe here, and the angels haven’t really bothered me, even though I know they know where I am…”

“Well, I’ll have to nip down to Earth for a couple things,” Crowley said easily, leaning against the doorframe. “I’ve got a wedding to attend, and someone’s got to tell Newt and Anathema that Agnes wasn’t so wrong after all. But after that…” Crowley trailed off. “I’m here as long as you’ll have me.”

Crowley met Aziraphale’s eyes and a look of such delight spread over the latter’s face that Crowley couldn’t help but grin back.

“Actually,” the unFallen angel said, something occurring to him, “I’ve got the perfect idea.”

Crowley turned and walked back into the living room, pulling out his mobile and flipping it open. Aziraphale followed him, momentarily abandoning the tea.

Crowley entered a number into his mobile and winked at Aziraphale. “I’ll set a little something up for lunch, huh, angel?” he asked, walking through the new door and back into the London bookshop, as though he thought he’d get better reception there. Aziraphale followed him.

The mobile rang against Crowley’s ear and then someone picked up on the other end.

“Mendellson’s Cafe, how can I help you?” asked a familiar voice.

“Hallo, Harper,” Crowley said, meeting Aziraphale’s eye and grinning deviously as he ran a hand through his dark hair. “It’s Crowley.”

Aziraphale gave him a look that said he had no idea what Crowley was doing but was willing to go along with whatever it was. The unFallen angel shot Aziraphale a thumbs-up with his free hand. Aziraphale looked like he wanted to roll his eyes but only ended up smiling broadly at Crowley instead.

“I’m here with an old friend at the end of eternity,” the unFallen angel said into his mobile, “and this is your one hour notice.” Crowley grinned at Aziraphale, thinking that there was no place on all of Heaven, Hell, or Earth he would rather be right now. He was with his angel, and he was _home._ “I’d like that cake now.”


	31. Author's Note

Huzzah! You made it!

Welcome to the author’s note!

I’ve never had enough to say in an author’s note that I thought it needed its own chapter before, but I’ve never written a 100k+ fic before either, so hey!

I’ll be covering four main sections here: real-world tie-ins, in-universe notes, acknowledgements, and potential universe extensions.

 

~~***~~

 

REAL-WORLD TIE-INS

 

This fic began as a glimmer in my eye when I was reading a chapter of a book I had been assigned for class called _Queer Twin Cities_ (the twin cities in question being Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota). The book contains several oral history studies done by researchers at the University of Minnesota documenting the local queer community from the ’80s to the present. Right in the first chapter, which discusses the research methods used by the book’s authors, I read this:

_I remember an interview that Ann McKenzie and I conducted with a man in his seventies named Herb in his tiny Minneapolis apartment. Toward the end of a seven-hour conversation (conducted over two sessions in 2004), Herb told us the story of his longtime partner dying in his arms. Ann and I cried along with Herb as he told us that his partner, his body and mind ravaged with the final stages of AIDS, did not recognize him in his final moments, asking “Who are you?” This is where research protocols get complicated, where it is made evident that narrative and affect, not data, drive the oral historical project. “Only your best friend, kid,” was Herb’s teary reply as he relayed it to us._

I had never read anything so moving in a class-assigned nonfiction text before. In my head, I ran through how that tragic scene must have played out, and thought to myself that this was the stuff that angsty fanfics were made of. I flipped through several fandoms in my head, and picked out _Good Omens_ , remembering how Crowley always called Aziraphale ‘angel.’ I swapped out Herb’s ‘kid’ for ‘angel,’ and rolled up my sleeves.

After that, I had to decide how I was going to kill Aziraphale. I didn’t know anything about AIDS, and it seemed like something that wouldn’t really fit in-universe anyway. There had to be a component of whatever disease I struck Aziraphale with that caused him to lose his memory, though, and that’s when I thought of Alzheimer’s.

I didn’t know a whole lot about that either, but I knew it had killed dear Terry Pratchett, and clearly needed more press. Once I started writing the sections with Alzheimer’s, I consulted the usual sources (medical websites and Wikipedia, let’s be honest), but also watched a two-hour BBC documentary available on YouTube called _Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzheimer’s_. 

I ended up incorporating many of Terry’s actual experiences into what happens to Aziraphale (as I shall enumerate shortly), but this had the unintended effect of creating a parallel between Neil  & Terry and Crowley & Aziraphale.

This parallel had already been partially established, in my opinion, by Neil and Terry themselves. There is a picture on the dust jacket of the first edition hardcover of _Good Omens_ of the authors standing by a moss-overgrown building that looks like it was once some kind of temple. Neil is half-sitting on a ledge with one leg up, wearing all black and gazing dramatically to the side like he’s cool stuff, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Terry is leaning casually against the doorway with his ankles crossed, wearing a white suit and hat.

There's a similar photograph (http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/157737585998/this-used-to-be-fun-have-i-ever-mentioned-how) on the dust jacket of another edition of _Good Omens_ , where Neil and Terry are both wearing suits (Neil’s black, Terry’s white) and holding champagne glasses. Neil is wearing sunglasses again (still cool stuff) and Terry’s ever-present hat is perched on his head, and Terry is grinning like he’s never wanted to pose for any other photograph.

It’s been speculated that Terry and Neil just really like cosplaying as Aziraphale and Crowley, and I don’t think those people are wrong. Then there’s the fact that the two of them wrote a book together, a decent part of the plot of which is dedicated to talking about the friendship between two of the main characters, different though they may be. You can even look at the types of books they write independently. Terry wrote Discworld, which is just a good time full of comedy and fantastic elements, while Neil (though he has a wider range of writing styles) usually writes fairly serious books or ones with dark themes—not so different, one might posit, from the tastes of angels and demons. 

And then I took this natural parallel that existed between two characters and their creators, and I killed Aziraphale in the same manner as his real-world counterpart and left Crowley all alone.

As mentioned previously, I incorporated into my narrative many of Terry’s actual experiences with Alzheimer’s (especially in the early stages) from the BBC documentary I watched. In the documentary, Terry explains that the first stage he went through after his diagnosis was feeling bewildered and angry, and the second was learning to live with it. The morning after he’d received the news, he found himself whistling in his garden and being generally quite cheerful. Later, he explained that it felt like he was having bits of himself stripped away until there was nothing left, and the truth was the only thing that mattered to him. For him, the Alzheimer’s made him take a little longer to figure things out, though he usually got there in the end. Most commonly he forgot where he left his keys, but he also encountered issues like trying to put his coat on upside down, or reading his mail. There’s a heartbreaking scene in the documentary where Terry is at a Discworld convention reading aloud the first chapter of his new book to an expectant crowd, and he gets stuck halfway through, apologizing and saying that there’s a shadow on the pages and he can’t quite make out the words.

And throughout it all, Terry’s assistant and long-time friend Rob Wilkins hovers worriedly at his side, and you can just tell that Terry’s got this under wraps better than he does. I don’t know if Terry actually took it that well or was just putting on a brave face, but throughout the documentary he brushes off serious talk and insists on referring to his disease as nothing more than an “embuggerance.”

The medical tests Dr Griffiths runs Aziraphale through in the fic are all things Terry goes through in the documentary. Alzheimer’s _is_ a fatal disease, though most people die of complications and conditions caused by it before it kills them outright, which is why it’s not perceived that way. Most people get between three and ten years after diagnosis; both Terry and Aziraphale got seven.

Then there’s one more little reference to Terry’s life that I swear I did not plan; it was a total coincidence I caught as I was scrolling through his Wikipedia page. The little cottage Crowley and Aziraphale live in in Midfarthing is located on Somerset Lane; in 1968, Terry married Lyn Purves and they moved to Somerset.

 

 

IN-UNIVERSE NOTES

 

I’m a huge fan of parallels, symbols, and references in writing, and though I think most of them are fairly evident within the narrative, I thought I’d mention some of the metaphors, symmetries, and themes I used, in case you missed them and are interested in a deeper reading.

**Crowley and Aziraphale’s (sort of) last words to each other.** Crowley’s last words to Aziraphale as he lays dying are to tell him that he’s his best friend. When Aziraphale ends his letter to Crowley, he signs it ‘your best friend, Aziraphale.’

**Aziraphale’s journals.** These slim black volumes serve as a physical embodiment of Aziraphale’s memories. Their later destruction is both a symbol and a symptom of Aziraphale’s increasingly confused and desperate mind as he loses his memories.

**Free Will vs. the Ineffable Plan.** There’s actually quite an interesting divide between the two philosophically. You may have noticed that everything Adam says is driven by his belief that a person has control over their destiny. When Crowley comes to him in Cambridge, looking to shuffle his guilt off onto some higher power, Adam tells him that no one did this _to_ Aziraphale, but rather that he did it to himself. As ‘human Incarnate,’ as _Good Omens_ puts it, Adam champions the Free Will argument.

Crowley, on the other hand, maintains throughout the fic that the ineffable plan has forced this upon them; an ironic point of view from someone who took a bite from an apple of the same Tree that Adam and Eve did.

Crowley and Adam’s other main disagreement comes down to what they believe Aziraphale is “meant” for, in the loosest term. Crowley believes Aziraphale is meant to be an angel, and will accept nothing less. Adam, on the other hand, believes that Aziraphale is meant to do only that which he chooses (since he is exercising free will), in which case he’s very clearly meant to be with Crowley.

**How Crowley wants to remember Aziraphale.** Crowley thinks to himself partway through the fic that he wants to remember Aziraphale as the way he sees him now: slightly rumpled but grinning, as though there was no place in the whole world he’d rather be. At the end of the coda, when Crowley is calling Harper and has just run a hand through his hair (rendering it ‘slightly rumpled’), Crowley grins at Aziraphale and thinks to himself that there is no place in all three realms that he’d rather be. Because it turns out that how Aziraphale wants to remember Crowley is exactly the same way as Crowley wants to remember him.

**To ship or not to ship?** I waffled back and forth on whether or not I wanted to ship Crowley and Aziraphale about ten times, and finally decided on platonic/ace soulmates as a good compromise. Part of this was because adding a romantic element would have added a great deal more mileage to a fic already three times longer than its target length. Part of it was because I really wasn’t sure if _I_ shipped it romantically, and I like to be sure of these things before I start writing. Mostly it was because I had that line at the end, “Only your best friend, angel,” and I wanted it to mean something.

I liked the narrative arc of Crowley simply coming to terms with the idea of having a friend at all after Eden, and then realizing that he had had one all along. That seemed like enough of an emotional step for Crowley that I didn’t want to barrage the poor guy with more complex emotions. I do, however, see it as potentially morphing into a romantic relationship later on (ie. in the sequel…), especially now that Crowley’s an angel and is therefore more likely to acknowledge emotions he’s stubbornly ignored for six millennia as a demon. In short: he’s figured out that he loves Aziraphale, but has yet to realize that he’s _in love_ with him.

**Selfless Aziraphale and Crowley.** Basically things simmered down to the point where Aziraphale would rather die with Crowley than live without him, and Crowley would rather die for Aziraphale than live without _him_. I thought that was a rather poetic conflict of interests.

**The blackbird.** Crowley picks up on many of the similarities between Aziraphale and the unfortunate bird that falls down their chimney, burns its wings off, and dies, but those aren’t the only ones at work. Crowley tries to heal the blackbird, and feels a very “undemonic compassion”; when Aziraphale dies later and Crowley unFalls, he will be the very definition of “undemonic.” Additionally, Crowley buries the blackbird in the flower garden in front of the cottage in the exact same place that, years later, Aziraphale will breathe his last.

**This is why we can’t have nice things.** There’s an interesting inverted parallel between two of the scenes where things are destroyed. In the first, Aziraphale comes into the cottage just in time to see Crowley destroying the clock that Aziraphale loved so much. In the second, Crowley comes into the cottage just in time to see Aziraphale destroying the journals that Crowley loved (and will love) so much. In both scenes, the one doing the destroying expects to be reprimanded, and in the end the one who walked in decides that they care more about the destroyer than they do about the destroyed item.

**The Good News.** When Crowley’s sitting in the church looking at the stained glass angel, he thinks to himself that Aziraphale never really did much proclaiming of the Good News. As an angel, Crowley is now also deputized to spread the Good News, little though he may like it. When Crowley tells Harper he can have Aziraphale’s books if he likes, he thinks to himself that he had “rarely been the bearer of such good news”; it was never specified what _sort_ of good news it need be.

**Saint Amandus.** Okay, so you remember back when Bert was trying to guess what the ‘A’ in ‘A. Ziraphale’ stood for, and he guessed ‘Amandus,’ and then mentioned that he was the patron saint of barmen? He wasn’t wrong. In addition to barmen, good old Saint Amandus (sometimes just St. Amand) is the patron saint of wine makers, beer brewers, merchants, innkeepers, and Boy Scouts. There is an excellent illumination of him from a fourteenth-century French manuscript available online (you can see it on his Wikipedia page) depicting St. Amandus and—wait for it—the Serpent. Yep. Good old patron saint of barmen and Crowley were apparently good pals long before Crowley met Bert. ;)

**The symbology of the apple and free will.** The scene with Adam in the apple orchard is full of all of these lovely symbols. When Adam says that apples aren't any good if they’re still on the tree and haven’t fallen yet, he is of course using the apple as a metaphor for Aziraphale, which goes completely over Crowley’s head. There’s also the symbology of the apple as free will, as shown in how Adam and Eve ate it and Fell. In the orchard, Crowley refuses the apple Aziraphale offers him, because he is rejecting both the idea of Aziraphale having Fallen and the idea that he and Aziraphale exercise free will; Crowley remains convinced that Aziraphale’s Fall was part of the ineffable plan and beyond his or Aziraphale’s control for most of the narrative. 

But still more symbols can be drawn from this juicy apple! There’s the fact that Eve only took the apple in the first place to cheer Crowley up, and when Aziraphale offers it to Crowley in the orchard he is also trying to cheer the demon up, as he’s feeling rather unwell. When Crowley notes that he’s never really liked apples ever since Eden, he is remembering both the unpleasant truths revealed to him when he took a bite and the fact that he caused the Fall of humanity, not so dissimilar from how he blames himself for Aziraphale’s Fall. And when Aziraphale, freshly mortal, offers Crowley the apple, it’s an interesting reversal of Eden, with a human offering the Serpent an apple, and the Serpent refusing it.

**Well thought-out.** Near the end of the fic, Adam says that just because God’s plan is ineffable doesn’t mean it wasn’t well thought-out. I’m not sure if the phrasing was just rattling around in my subconscious, but when I was skimming back through _Good Omens_ to double-check some names and facts, I stumbled upon a bit where Aziraphale is reading _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies_ and thinks to himself, “Sometimes you really had to hope that the ineffable plan had been properly thought out.” Guess it was!

**Who goes to Hell and who goes to Heaven?** The fic opens with Crowley and Aziraphale doing everything short of placing actual bets on whether or not historical figures are currently residing in Heaven or Hell. Despite Crowley recalling this several times throughout the years, it manages to never occur to him to wonder where Aziraphale would go after his death, or that he might go anywhere at all. 

**First and last scene.** The opening scene takes place in Aziraphale’s bookshop, where they’re talking about Ludwig II (a truly fascinating person who died under _extremely_ mysterious circumstances; do look him up!). The coda has them again in Aziraphale’s bookshop, and the question of where Ludwig ended up is finally answered.

**Aziraphale’s heaven.** I actually flip-flopped a lot in my head as far as what Aziraphale’s little patch of Heaven might look like. I liked the idea of it being the bookshop with the Bentley parked out front, but the bookshop was also symbolic of a point in their relationship where Crowley stopped by but never stuck around. The cottage, however, was a mixed bag as well; on one hand, it represented the part of their relationship where Crowley stayed with Aziraphale and really committed himself (though Crowley would never admit such a thing). On the other hand, it was a reminder of Aziraphale’s decline and eventual death, which was certainly not something pleasant to hang around with for all of eternity. So I split the difference and gave him both.

**Grammatical epithets.** You may have noticed that, despite the fact that Aziraphale spends 80% of the fic as a human, he is always referred to outside of dialogue as ‘the angel,’ or occasionally ‘his angel.’ This is because the entire fic is from Crowley’s point of view, and Crowley remains in denial of what’s happened for a majority of the narrative. Even when he’s accepted Aziraphale’s impending death, he can’t accept that he is anything less than an angel, because to Crowley that’s just _what he is._ When Crowley finally accepts this at the end (it’s rather ironic that his very denial of this is what prevents him from realizing that Aziraphale might have a life after death), Aziraphale is referred to outside of dialogue as ‘the former angel.’ 

Along a similar note, Crowley doesn’t so much as _think_ the word ‘friend’ and ‘Aziraphale’ in the same sentence for almost the entire narrative, because he refuses to allow himself to associate the two. After he has unFallen and come to terms with the fact that he and Aziraphale are, in fact, very good friends, the word comes into use outside the dialogue.

**The mechanics of Falling.** I worked through a lot of variations on what exactly would make a person Fall or unFall, making sure that things worked in every situation. Generally, a catalyst of some sort is needed for Falling or unFalling to occur, and once you’re a human you can’t (un)Fall into an angel or demon.

The logic works something like this: If you do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, you’re a demon. If you do the right thing for the right reasons, you’re an angel. And if you do the wrong thing for the right reasons, you’re a human. If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons…well, then evidently you’re just very confused and should go back and think things through. In addition to a catalyst, a certain amount of will or thought is required to Fall or unFall; one has to at some point reject one’s current status as well as demonstrate allegiance to another.

Let’s work the situations through, just for fun. Aziraphale Fell to human because he did the wrong thing (killing his brothers, washing his hands of Heaven) for the right reasons (saving an innocent, and his friend). Crowley unFalls at the end because he did the right thing (looking after Aziraphale) for the right reasons (because he cares for him). Lucifer Fell back in the day because he did the wrong thing (leading a rebellion, killing his brothers) for the wrong reasons (thinking he was better than God, wanting power). Eve Fell (as much as the original humans could Fall) to human because she did the wrong thing (taking the apple) for the right reasons (wanting to cheer up Crowley). Adam Fell to human because he too did the wrong thing (taking the apple) for the right reasons (not wanting Eve to be alone with the knowledge).

The differentiation between Falling to human and Falling to demon is mostly the motive behind the act. It’s the difference between pulling away from God just to pull away and simply walking in a different direction because that way seemed right or looked interesting. The first is spite (doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons); the second is free will. This is one of the reasons why Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t Fall during the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t; they were aligning themselves _with_ humanity, not _against_ the higher powers of their respective sides (which would have involved Crowley teaming up with Heaven and Aziraphale with Hell). Instead of going straight ahead (right thing for the right reasons) or backwards (wrong thing for the wrong reasons), they turned onto a side street because, look, you can probably beat the traffic that way.

Crowley works through a bunch of alternate scenarios in the fic when he’s trying to figure out how to unFall Aziraphale, particularly looking at free will as the key to Falling to human. Though he manages to reach approximately the correct conclusions from his logic, he is, in fact, wrong in this regard. Free will is not unique to humanity, as shown by Aziraphale and Crowley throughout GO canon. Everyone has free will, though the choice is theirs whether or not to exercise it. Many angels and demons simply assume they have no free will, choosing instead to believe in the ineffable plan, and let their destiny be shaped by what they think is a higher purpose. Meanwhile, Father Gilbert just really enjoys fishing.

**The Seven Stages of Grief.** Depending on who you listen to, there are different numbers of the stages of grief, but I went with seven: disbelief, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, and acceptance. And poor, _poor_ Crowley I put through all seven steps on three separate occasions: learning that Aziraphale had Fallen, and was mortal; learning of the diagnosis and that Aziraphale was dying for sure; and coming to terms with Aziraphale’s death after the fact. Crowley usually spends quite a long time in the denial stage, which he seems quite fond of, though he gives guilt and bargaining a run for their money as well. Sorry about that.

In the end, this fic really turned out to be about Crowley grieving three separate times, and coming to terms with things that are beyond his power to change. Some of these things he simply could not prevent, and others he had to accept by acknowledging that Aziraphale had agency and was entitled to make his own decisions.

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

Many thanks of course to my lovely betas, doctortreklock and spinner12 on ao3.

Thanks also go to my hard-working and ever-patient Brit-picker, thepudupudu on tumblr, who helped me scrub out the worst of my pesky Americanisms and lost out on a lot of sleep because of it.

Special thanks to everyone who left such kind comments, and fist-bumps to those who waited patiently for nearly a month to read the ending!

 

 

POTENTIAL UNIVERSE EXTENSIONS

 

As I was writing this, I found myself thinking that it might be fun to write a companion fic that was this entire thing solely from Aziraphale’s point of view, because I felt that he had many important things to say that he would never, of course, let slip in front of Crowley. I managed to work most of these into the fic in more subtle ways, but the idea got me thinking of potential additional works within this universe.

These include (but are not limited to): the wedding of Bert and Donnie, the first Christmas, a more in-depth narration of Crowley’s Fall, Aziraphale’s POV of the last few chapters (when he was in Heaven watching Crowley), and what exactly went on between Crowley and Michael right after Crowley was captured. Also: Father Gilbert babysitting His grandchildren. 

As of the time of writing, I’ve got three one-shots along the lines of the above in the pipeline, and they should be posted soon(ish).

I’ve also got a (far less traumatizing, far more fun, and equally as lengthy) sequel all lined up, though it’s probably a ways out, as it took me months to write this behemoth and I have been putting off other projects in the meantime.

Let me know if you’d be interested in further stories from this universe, and I’d love to know what you thought of the ending!

Thanks for reading! *blows kisses* ;)

 

 

Works Inspired By This One

The lovely sous-le-saule drew Crowley during the clock scene [here](http://sous-le-saule.tumblr.com/post/148511119372/i-know-nothing-about-drawing-i-only-know-i-had-to).

The lovely curiouslissa drew Aziraphale when he finds Crowley's feather in the book [here](http://curiouslissa.tumblr.com/post/173637793317/then-he-reached-down-and-pulled).

I found some free time and did [this](http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/157767216368/yeah-so-i-may-have-illustrated-my-own-fic-a) not-specific-to-a-particular-scene piece of Crowley mourning Aziraphale.

Illustration of the waterfall scene in South America [here](http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/163737371593/from-my-good-omens-fic-a-memory-of-eden-the).

 

There's now a masterpost of all the various Eden!verse things [here](http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/159960726218/edenverse-masterpost). This is kept updated.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Память об Эдеме](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13901475) by [ImprobableDreams900](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900), [Sonnet23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonnet23/pseuds/Sonnet23)




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